Faith Matters 15: For The Gardner News, November 4, 2006
“For All the Saints”
We are a resurrection people. Our faith boldly proclaims that physical, bodily death is not the end; our lives continue even after our flesh has turned to ashes or dust. We believe that beyond this life we continue to exist, and even while we live, we continue to be linked to those who have gone before. How many of us have felt the real presence of departed loved ones! Not just tricks of memory or wishful thinking, but the conviction that in some very real way, a way we don’t necessarily understand, our departed loved ones are still with us, still connected to us. Sometimes we talk to them, asking for their comfort, guidance and assistance. Scripture refers to these departed as “a great cloud of witnesses”, who are still with us, still linked in mystical communion to us. Popularly they are referred to as saints.
In the church calendar, November 1st, or the first Sunday in November is often celebrated as All Saints Day. Some churches mark this day as a time of remembrance and celebration of the official “canonized” saints. The following day is sometimes celebrated as All Souls’ Day, or as it was know historically, the Day of the Dead, a day to remember more broadly all others who have died. Many Protestant traditions combine both days into a single celebration and remembrance of all the saints, and especially our own departed loved loves.
In the early church the saints were simply those dedicated to God. The apostle Paul used the term to refer to faithful living members of the churches he corresponded with. It was a broad and inclusive term, always used in the plural, and referring to those who were very much alive. Only later was it applied to individuals and to the dead. By the tenth century the Roman Church had instituted a formal process of canonization of the official saints of the church.
In many traditions when we gather at the communion table to share in the bread and the cup, we are linked “in communion” with the whole of the mystical body of Christ, not just in the present, but also reaching back across the ages to an upper room in Jerusalem. In this communion of saints we are linked across time and space with all the “saints of God” who went before us, and who are living now in far flung corners of our world. We are linked not only to the spiritual giants of the church, Peter, Paul, John, Helen, Ann, Francis, and Theresa. We are also linked in this mystical communion to the departed saints of our own lives, our own loved ones who have left us and gone to God.
A well known story tells of a priest once asked how many showed up for the early morning communion service. He responded, “three older women, the janitor, several thousand archangels, a large number of seraphim, and several million of the triumphant saints of God, more than I could count!” And most of us would add, plus our own dear parents or grandparents and other loved ones who remain linked to us in a love that is stronger than death. We are surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses, whose presence we sometimes feel with us, like fluttering wings, offering us peace and assurance that beyond the bounds of death, there is life anew.