When my family moved into our home almost five years ago, we liked the sweet quiet of the neighborhood and the charm of our little house. We had yet to realize the very best part of living here: our neighbors. The Neighborhood Family, as we all call it, consists of the most generous, helpful souls I’ve known.

Linda teaches my kids to bake and brings us tomatoes from her garden. Her husband, Ron, is a veteran woodworker who’s going to help me build a cabinet this winter. Tim taught me how to drive my riding lawn mower, and he and his wife, Leah, are my kids’ tae kwon do instructors. Mark next door owns every tool known to modern man, and instead of fixing things for me, he shows me how do it myself. His wife, Deb, is beautifully compassionate when life gets hard. Mike and Danielle hire my kids to pet sit and taught them how to invoice and negotiate service rates.

My family is all set! Each neighbor has a special brand of help he or she is ready to give. Depending on each other in our little community is mode de vie; so much so that I don’t even question whether I could borrow a tool or a cup of sugar. I factor in the eager generosity with just about every undertaking.

Who can you factor in or count on for your own day-to-day experiences? Someone under your own roof, in your parish or down the block? These supportive relationships, varying in intimacy, are a sweet blessing from the Lord that point to a greater reality: The fellowship of the Communion of Saints is far more accessible to us than the aid of the most dependable person on Earth.

Think about it. God gives us blessings that are wonderful in and of themselves, yet they all reveal something deeper than face value. The saints, like my neighborhood family, each have a patronage, something they’re especially equipped to help us do. Theirs is the collective voice of earthly experience; they had distractions, demands on their time and repeated sins they brought to confession. They had difficult spouses, weird in- laws and wayward kids, kids who became saints themselves or both! The struggle was real and so are they.

There in Heaven, in complete joyful union with our Lord, the saints are more alive than they were on Earth and more capable of walking with us. Our brothers and sisters in Christ—fellow Catholics who begged for grace and battled inner and actual demons—are happier and more eager to lend a hand than the best of us on Earth. Who better to assist and encourage than those who know the challenges all too well? St. Rita had a difficult marriage. St. Monica had a drinking problem. St. Jerome was in a perpetually bad mood. St. Bernadette wasn’t believed. St. Francis and his family had opposing plans for his life. St. Faustina’s fellow nuns criticized the work she did. Whether you’re battling yourself, your fellow man or insurmountable circumstances, there’s a saint for that.

A planned 48-hour trip to New Mexico this summer with a friend for her 40th turned into an undeniable pilgrimage, filled with prayerful experiences that went right to my heart. In Chimayo, a Catholic church known as the “Lourdes of the United States,” I knelt before a crucifix, pouring out my heart to Jesus. Eyes closed and hands folded over my face, I whispered in prayer, “Send me help.” Minutes later, I noticed right there, among countless votive candles with saints’ images on them, two images I knew were there just for me: St. Rita and St. Francis’ faces glowed in the chapel’s dim light, two of my dearest heavenly friends.

We were never meant to trod the path to eternal life alone. Accepting the friendship of the saints means someone is helping us through the rocky parts and delights with us in the smoother stretches. Let it be now, in this month when we both celebrate the saints’ victorious lives and recognize that the earthly path does indeed come to an end, that we avail ourselves of the ready help from heaven.

All holy men and women, saints of God, pray for us.

Katie Sciba is a national speaker and Catholic Press Award- winning columnist. Katie has been married for 15 years and is blessed with six children.

This article appeared in the November 2024 edition of The Catholic Telegraph Magazine. For your complimentary subscription, click here