Second only to Easter, All Saints’ Day is my favourite feast day of the year. While our Sunday lectionary calendar provides for our continuing in the cycle of readings from the gospel according to Mark, I cannot imagine skipping our yearly remembrance of all the saints who have gone before us.
When All Saints’ Day lands on a weekday, my custom is to have an evening liturgy. It might help to picture this church the way it is on Christmas Eve or the eve of the Great Vigil of Easter, but without all the poinsettia or flowers. It’s different going to church at night — you don’t have sunlight beaming in here through the stained glass windows, instead, you are aware of the walls that surround you as you sit here and you see light from outside the church. Perhaps diminishing the sense of sight heightens the other senses so that they are more receptive to entering into the Holy.
So, every year we will gather on All Saints’ night, even if it lands on a Saturday, and spend time in a very holy space, that place between heaven and earth. On All Saints’ night, the separation between heaven and earth disappears and for a brief time, we encounter the ages — almost like staring up into a starry sky and feeling oneself carried away into the vastness of the heavens — the way it seems in the fall driving up I-89 from Bethel on Route 107 and feeling as though I could drive right up into the Big Dipper.
Someone once commented to me after an All Saints’ Day service that took place at night that she’d never realised how much of a vigil All Saints’ is when observed at night. We then talked about the inclusion in the eucharistic prayer of names of those who have died. She wanted to know if we only include the names of those who have died in the past year, since last All Saints’ Day. I answered no, it is anyone that people wish to remember. She then mused, What would it be like if we had 200 names and stayed up all night remembering them? I replied, Then we would stay up all night because when we come to the eucharist and particularly that of All Saints, we enter into God’s time and space and it doesn’t matter if it takes three hours to say everyone’s name. If praying for those people meant keeping a true vigil, so be it, all the better. I would hope that some day, someone will include my name in such a prayer list and it will be read in the company of all the other saints.
All Saints marks, in the larger picture, a vigil, in which we participate by the very fact that we live today in the here and now and wait for the promises of heaven tomorrow. Our evening eucharists on All Saints’ night may drive home the notion of vigil — staying up — but we are engaged in a life-long vigil, one that starts at the moment of our baptism and ends at the moment of our death.
By saying so publicly, I may risk a reprimand because there’s nothing anywhere I know that permits or suggests the following practice: at the time of someone’s death, I have taken to anointing them with the oil of chrismation (we use two different oils — one that is blessed for healing and one for baptisms and ordinations). Some will argue that sacraments are only for the living and my anointing a body is improper. But I do so, with the prayer that we will all remember that the newly dead was baptised in water and marked and sealed as Christ’s own for ever. His or her vigil of reaching the ‘for ever’ part of the journey may have ended, but we who still live in the here and now need to be reminded of that resurrection moment promised at baptism.
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But how do we get from here to there? As Thomas asks so poignantly in John’s gospel, often read at the burial office, ‘But Lord, how will we know the way?’ Jesus answers him, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.’ Those words are lovely, but don’t necessarily give us specifics.
So, I turn to the Beatitudes, the text that is appointed for All Saints’ Day. Those ‘blessed be’s provide a wonderful road for us and they offer us a necessary moral compass and source of values.
The Beatitudes I am about to read come from Chilean church workers. At the retreat yesterday with the Daughters of the King, we reflected on these Beatitudes.
Blessed are the poor, not the penniless,
but those whose hearts are free,
Blessed are the meek, not the soft,
but those who are patient and tolerant.
Blessed are the merciful, not those who forget,
but those who forgive.
Blessed are the pure in heart, not those who act like angels,
but those whose lives are transparent.
Blessed are the peacemakers, not those who shun conflict,
but those who face it squarely.
Blessed are those are persecuted for justice,
not because they suffer, but because they love.
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If we are people of Christ, then we are people of the beatitudes. And if we are people of the Beatitudes, then we are people…
whose hearts are free,
who are patient and tolerant,
who forgive,
who are transparent,
who face conflict squarely,
and who love for justice’s sake.
If the Beatitudes do not provide enough of a compass, then we have the baptismal covenant. These vows become the outline of a life lived wholly and holy. Living fully the baptismal covenant in our daily life demands our life, our soul, our all. All of us — lay and ordained — have made and reaffirmed these vows.
We’re about to baptize today Connor at the 9.00 and Linda at the 10.00 and start them off on this life-long vigil to eternal life. As they are baptised with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they are going to lose their life to be born into eternal life. They are going to be marked and sealed as Christ’s own for ever, just as most of us have been. It’s a huge journey they are about to make and they will only make it with our help, just as we have helped one another get along this far. If we do that, then we ourselves embody and begin to understand better just what the Communion of Saints is — you and me.
And if you are not quite sure just who makes up the Communion of Saints, consider these words by poet Mitch Finley who puts it this way: ‘The Christian doctrine of the Communion of Saints is simple, really… All it says is that those who have gone before us are still with us. All it says is that past generations still count and must be taken into account. In other words, we’re all in this together. All of us.’
So, as we remember our loved ones who have died, let us also welcome Connor and Linda into this wonderful body and remember that we’re all in this together — now and for ever.
