I was delighted to learn that Maximillian Kolbe visited Lisieux before his mission to Japan to pray to Therese, who wanted to be a missionary and is the patroness of missions. It’s always cool to see the way the saints work together. Here a Polish pope and an Albanian nun. There a French nun and a Polish friar. If this is true then our work together in the body of Christ is accomplished by a whole wonderful, invisible network of relationships and complementary interdependence that we cannot see. Only now and again do we glimpse the edge of the pattern, and from that can surmise the whole. The communion of the saints is not just a picture gallery or a family reunion or a fellowship time. It is a powerful network of inter-related souls. It is no sentimental nonsense when Therese says, “I will spend my heaven doing good on earth,” Kolbe has a devotion to her, goes to Lisieux to pray to her and winds up saying, “I have a mission in heaven that is far greater than my mission on earth.”