Saint means “holy person”. It comes from the Latin noun and adjective with masculine and feminine versions: sanctus/sancta. In Spanish, we know the masculine san (as in San Francisco) and the feminine santa (as in Santa Rosa). The Latin neuter sanctum means “holy thing”. The other languages derived largely from Latin use these or closely similar words to provide this esteemed title. In English, the word appears as the noun saint, as the adjective saintly (synonymous with holy), and as the title saint (e.g., Saint Joseph). A closely related English term is sanctity, with its synonym holiness. In other languages without English’s tendency to have more than one word for the same reality, it can be easier to see that the terms holy one and saint mean basically the same, despite not looking alike.
A related term world be sanctify, meaning “to make holy” or “to bless”, as in sanctifying grace (God’s life in us that makes us holy people), or sanctification (the process of a person’s becoming holy, a process that is mainly God’s doing).
this sense of “making holy” can stand some explanation. The church holds that God sanctifies and so makes the saint, since it is God’s grace that renders a person holy, despite that person’s need to be open to using God-given talents and resources. One does not make oneself holy or attain the status of saint by oneself. A prayer to God that says “Make me a saint” is indeed appropriate to pray to God, the real Sanctifier.
The related and derogatory term sanctimonious might be defined as “holier than thou”, a colloquial expression denoting a proud person who acts as if he or she is holier or morally better than others. Sometimes this word’s meaning, unfortunately, gets extended to describe saints. In fact, true saints are far from sanceimonious.
The Greek language uses the word hagios for “holy person”, and that is the root for the English words hagiology (the study of the saints) and hagiography (the writings about the saints, and also the study of those writings.)
