Topic: Communion of Saints in the Catecombs
Question:
Is there any specific evidence in the first three centuries of Christians practicing the Communion of the Saints in the Catecombs - especially in the form of icons?
Answer:
Evidence of early Christians asking the saints to pray for them can be found in the earliest Liturgies of the Church, whereby the Sacrifice of the Eucharist was offered up in union with the martyrs... the martyrs being the earliest intercessors appealed to by Christians, since they were seen as literally participating in the Sacrifice of Christ. What's more, as early as 254 A.D., at the height of the persecutions under Emperor Decius and his successors, we have a papyrus from Egypt recording a Christian prayer to Mary, asking for her prayerful intercession. The prayer is called the Sub Tuum, and it goes like this:
"We fly to your patronage, O Holy Mother of God:
despise not our petitions in our necessities,
but deliver us always from all dangers,
O Glorious and Blessed Virgin."
Here is one of the earliest examples of both Marian devotion and of the intercession of saints ...and it comes to us a generation before Constantine. The papyrus upon which the prayer is found was conclusively dated, by Muslim archelogists, to about 254 A.D. As far as icons go, there are a few depictions of saints in the catecombs, but they're not exactly icons or the type of venerated images we'd fine in later Catholic churches. Yet, this in no way implies that the communion of saints, and their intercession and veneration, were not realities for early Roman-period Christians. Rather, it merely means that Christian art had not yet developed in that direction... especially given the fact that statues and wall paintings were still being used to depict pagan gods and goddesses at this time.
Mark Bonocore
Catholic Apologist
June 8, 2002