God of holiness,
your glory is proclaimed in every age:
as we rejoice in the faith of your saints,
inspire us to follow their example
with boldness and joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
We will sing a song of the saints of God. We remember them, we anticipate them, and we join with them in the praise of God. And with God’s help, we will join with them in obedience to his will and blessedness in his abundant love.
Through the Revelation of St John we receive a picture of a multitude gathered before the throne of God, worshipping him and living under the wings of his mercy. These are the ones who came through the great persecutions of the early church as if they were being made more perfect in a refiner’s fire. Through their ordeal there was always a presence with them, an Other – they were not alone. These are the martyrs of the church – and they are among the saints.
There are others too: saints are believers, made holy through their faith in God who alone is holy of himself; and the saints are people you see every day.
To prepare you for a song, and for singing it along with the little saints who will sing it with us, let’s remember that everything from great to small is in God’s hands. However tiny and improbable a moment of time may seem, a moment of a turning point, a kindness, a perseverance in faith, it is out of the simple moments of life that a faith and a soul-habit of godly love are forged.
This is the weekend when we remember all saints, every saint, and all souls, all the faithful departed. And we may be thrown back on remembering our own mortality – and our inability to see it all through on our own.
There is a promise for us – if we are weak, he is strong; if we have been cursed, we will be blessed in him; if we are poor, or lacking in any need or faculty, we will be made whole and well and happy. And if we mourn, we will receive the comfort of the Lord. He weeps with those who weep, and laughs with those who laugh. He will always be by your side.
There are as many kinds of saints as there are of people. Through the ages the church has recognized many kinds of people as living exemplary Christian lives.
In the early years of the church, there were the martyrs; soon there were the monks of the desert and the faraway isles, denying themselves and taking up their crosses and following Christ in their own day; there were the organizers of monasteries and convents, like Benedict of Nursia and Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa of Avila.
There were the apostles and first converts who carried the witness across the continents, in Persia, India, the Sudan and Ethiopia. There were the preachers of the gospel to new peoples: Francis of Assisi, Dominic; the missionaries to Africa and Asia and the Americas, Francis Xavier, Father Kino.
There are the modern martyrs, like Janani Luwum and Jonathan Daniels, who stood with the oppressed at the cost of their own lives.
There are you and me, brothers and sisters.
For we carry the gospel and the witness and the mission of the saints with us. And we are all part of Christ’s body, his hands and his voice and his love in the world. Each of us has a gift, and we rejoice in our diversity and our unity.
In his letter to the Romans (12:4-8) the apostle Paul explains:
For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
It is through the diversity of gifts that we balance each other, giving to the whole body our own unique and vital contributions. For each of us, for each of the saints, there is a question to be asked: What gives you joy? What is it that in the doing of it, the giving of it, you experience the fullness of grace?
(I do not mean giddy happiness or a temporary feeling of satisfaction at a good deed done, but a deeper calm in your life at the knowledge you are God’s child and that you are on the right road. It is not a feeling that comes and goes: remember that Mother Theresa of Calcutta, in her private meditations, acknowledged the burden of her work and the desert of sadness she endured.)
When I was a kid I had heroes: I’ll tell you about two of them.
There was Willie Mays – when our Cub Scout Pack went to a Giants’ game, I expected him to hit a home run… and he did, on his third at-bat.
And there was Johnny Cash, whom I think my brothers and I mostly enjoyed imitating – at the beginning of his television show he’d introduce himself, turning to the camera and saying, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,” in his deep voice, then playing a chord on his guitar. Picture little boys lined up in front of the TV following his every move. Voices a little higher pitched. Later on he became a more real hero to me, as I learned about his life and his faith. One phrase really stuck with me for years after I read it, and it is relevant today, this week, because it was his response to a request for a political statement:
“I’m just tryin’ to be a good Christian.” (Penthouse interview, 1975)
In a way that is what any saint is trying to do – to be a good Christian, a faithful soul, sanctified not by his, or her, own efforts or deeds or lifestyle, but by trust in God. And to live by that faith – and follow God’s calling.
We move, as we become the people who trust God, from being outsiders, seekers, lost in the world and the world’s devices, to becoming members of the body of Christ, and living stones in the building that is the living Church.
In the letter to the Ephesians (2:19-22) Paul explained:
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.
And it is in the people of God, as they follow God, in obedience to Christ, that the Spirit is working, and working through us to bring the joy of salvation, of God’s good news, to the world. Each of us has a gift to receive and to give: each of us, following joy where it leads, has a joy to give to the world, the joy (uniquely filtered through the prism of our souls) of the love of God in Christ.
God of holiness, your glory is proclaimed in every age:
as we rejoice in the faith of your saints,
inspire us to follow their example with boldness and joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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