The Lord is glorious in his saints

This week I have read at least a couple of articles by fellow writers attempting to rehabilitate Hallowe’en as part of a properly Christian celebration of Hallowmas, against understandings of it as a purely secular excuse for revelry, or as a satanic celebration of evil. These writers have an excellent point. But there would be no All Hallows’ Eve without All Saints’ Day, and the latter is even more urgently in need of rehabilitation.

In terms of the Church’s year, the Feast of All Saints gathers up the celebrations of all the saints’ lives (there are no more major Holy Days until Advent proper begins), concluding the season of the Church Militant and Expectant – that is, the present age – in preparation for the inauguration of the era of the Church Triumphant, Our Lord’s Advent, which has already been hinted at in the Feasts of the Transfiguration and the Holy Cross, becomes increasingly prominent on Sundays in November, and reaches a climax on the Last Sunday after Pentecost (the Church of England’s Common Worship Kalendar makes explicit that ‘the period between All Saints’ Day and the First Sunday of Advent is observed as a time to celebrate and reflect upon the reign of Christ in earth and heaven’ [main volume, 532]). All Saints’ Day thus has not only historical implications – tying up the past and present and looking toward the future – but also eschatological ones – for the past, present, and future with which it deals are all part of the one eternal reality which we call the Kingdom of God.

If this is true of the Kingdom, then it is true of its subjects: the saints are always with us in the Communion that is the Church (cf. the Apostles’ Creed: ‘I believe in the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints’), a ‘fellowship of love and prayer’ (Collect for a Saint III [bcp 199]), not dead relics of a static past but living members of an active present. It is their share in the victory of Christ, their place in the nearer presence of God, and their abiding presence with us that All Saints’ Day first and foremost celebrates.

It is fitting that the Church baptizes on All Saints’ Day, for (as one of the concluding prayers at baptism apart from the Eucharist, perhaps moreso than in any of the ‘ordinary’ bcp1979 baptismal prayers, reminds us) baptism is the seal of our heavenly adoption, the means of incorporation into the Body of Christ, the sign that we are ‘worthy to share in the inheritance of the saints in light’ [Cl 1.12] and are ‘fellow-citizens with the saints and members of the household of God’ [Ep 2.19].

But baptism is not the end, but the beginning, of a journey, and we short-change those we baptize if we do not live into the promises we make to help them ‘grow into the full stature of Christ’. While it may be true that in many places in the Scriptures (and to some extent in the Prayer Book, e.g. at the Consecration of a Priest [533]) all the faithful are called ‘saints’, it is also true that those same Scriptures (also echoed in the Prayer Book, cf. the Preface for All Saints [347], and the Hymnal) speak of those ‘called to be saints’ and exhort us to ‘run the race’, ‘press on toward the goal’, ‘work out [one’s] salvation’ – with fear and trembling, no less! – in order to ‘receive the crown of glory’. As St John the Evangelist reminds us in today’s Epistle, if ‘we are God’s children now’, it is also true that ‘what we will be has not yet been revealed’ – but those who ‘have this hope in him [that we will be like him] purify themselves, just as he is pure’. But if we do not quite see the Father as he is, nevertheless Christ is the icon (image) of the Father, the promise that union with the divine is available to humanity in general, and the saints are icons of Christ, ‘choice vessels of grace’ and ‘lights of the world’ [Preface of a Saint I, 348, and Additional Prayer at Burial, 487, part of the Eucharistic Prayer in bcp1549], signs that that unity is available through Him to each and every one of us. And those saints who ‘from its earliest days the Church has rejoiced to recognize and commemorate... who were extraordinary or even heroic servants of God and of God’s people for the sake, and after the example, of their Savior Jesus Christ’ [preface to Holy Women, Holy Men] are witness to both Christ’s death-conquering love and the struggle to live fully into it:

These are they who have contended
     for their Savior’s honor long,
wrestling on till life was ended,
     following not the sinful throng;
these, who well the fight sustained,
triumph by the Lamb have gained.

These are they whose hearts were riven,
     sore with woe and anguish tried,
who in prayer full oft have striven
     with the God they glorified;
now, their painful conflict o’er,
God has bid them weep no more.

     ‘Who are these like stars appearing’ [286]

But the saints – though we are ‘aided by their prayers’ [Additional Prayer at Burial, 489] – cannot serve as concrete instances of ‘virtuous and godly living’ [Collect for All Saints, 194] unless their presence with us is explicitly acknowledged: unless their feasts (which are their ‘heavenly birthdays’) are celebrated, their names included in the intercessory and Eucharistic prayers, their lives recounted, their images made to surround us in the liturgy, their earthly remains honored (which does not entail superstition or subscription to the late medieval ‘Romish doctrine’ concerning these things that is condemned in Article xxii). Only in the thick of this ‘cloud of witnesses’ by which the Lord is revealed can sanctity be fully set forth as a goal for all followers of Christ; without their witness, the would-be follower of Christ is likely to stop at belonging rather than becoming, to settle for membership in an organization rather than membership of an organism, to be part only of a ‘congregation here present’ rather than a ‘congregation which is here assembled in [God’s] name to celebrate the Commemoration of the most glorious death of [His] Son’,* to seek only vague and shallow ‘community’ and not true and deep communion.

The classic Gospel for the feast, also appointed in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary, shows us what saints look like, and what promise is given to them:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, 
     for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, 
     for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, 
     for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 
     for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, 
     for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, 
     for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, 
     for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, 
     for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you 
     and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, 
     for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

And the Lesson from the Revelation to St John spells out what this heavenly reward looks like:

They are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

And so on this All Saints’ Day and every saint’s day, we give thanks to God,

who in the obedience of [his] saints has given us an example of righteousness, and in their eternal joy a glorious pledge of the hope of our calling;
     Preface of a Saint II [348]

and we pray,

We therefore pray thee, help thy servants,
     whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with thy saints,
     in glory everlasting...
     Te Deum laudamus

The Lord is glorious in his saints: O come, let us adore him.
     Invitatory of All Saints’ Day [44]

*  From the Prayer for the whole state of Christ’s Church, the latter the original 1549 wording, the former the much less adequate wording found from 1552 forward.