Homily: All Saints Day 2014
Rev. 7: 2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3: 1-3 Mt. 5: 1-12
A few weeks ago, I heard a radio “trailer” by Brian Cox, the BBC’s favourite “celebrity physicist” for the third programme of his series “The Human Universe”. The programme, entitled “Are we alone?”, is concerned with the search for other intelligent life in the Universe, especially focusing on data from the “Voyager” probes, launched in the 1970’s and now deep in interstellar space. I was interested, because, unusually, Cox frankly admitted that – although statistically the chances of other forms of conscious, self-aware and intelligent life in the universe must be high – at present, there is only a resounding silence in our galaxy. From this, he drew two interesting conclusions: in the first place, he suggested that we are alone (at least as far as we know, and for the time being); but secondly, he suggested that this “aloneness” gives us a real responsibility, a responsibility to recognise and value the uniqueness of each human life as something extraordinary within the universe, and a responsibility to cherish the planet which gave us birth. I found the interview both stimulating and quite uplifting; despite his rationalism, Cox was coming to a conclusion long-cherished by people of faith – there is something special about humanity.
But it was the title of his programme – “Are we alone?” – which has remained a focus for my reflection. Our society is pretty terrified by that question and its ramifications, drawing much less positive conclusions than Brian Cox. For many, there is only one answer – We are indeed alone – or, as the buses in London advertised last year, “Don’t worry: there probably isn’t a God”. But that aloneness is terrifying – we will do almost anything to fill it, whether it be the casual relationships, the drink or the drugs, the constant buzz of media stimulation we need to drive away the silence of that aloneness, or the frantic chatter of the social media we use to convince us that we are OK, that we do have friends (at least on Facebook). And at the end of life, we are terrified of being alone, alone in illness, alone in dying, despite all the paraphernalia of the modern care system. We seem to stand in a paradox. We are both desperate to be “alone” – in the sense of being fully independent, fully autonomous, answerable only to ourselves for our life-choices – and desperately afraid of being alone, of being unloved, uncared for, unnoticed when this life comes to an end.
You have probably guessed by now where I am going with all this. Today’s feast, this Solemnity of All Saints, proclaims loud and clear that there is another answer to Cox’s question. Today’s feast celebrates our belief that we are not alone, and never can be. We are not alone because we belong to God, and every moment of our life is in his hands. Recall those words of St John: Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God’s children; and that is what we are. He is our Father, and nothing will break that bond of paternal love – we are not alone. But still more, we are not alone because we are part of the Church, part of Christ’s Body, part of a family – the Communion of Saints – which extends through space and time in one great act of redemption and thanksgiving.
This is a profound part of our faith, part of our creed since at least 390 AD. In the earliest liturgies, and still today in some Eastern churches, the feast of All Saints was celebrated on the Sunday after Pentecost, the Octave Day of the Church’s birthday. Such timing recognises that the Church, “born” at Pentecost, reaches its fulfilment as a family when all God’s children are gathered in the Kingdom – when all, as it were, have come home. The culmination of the feast celebrates the fulfilment of the Church’s mission. In the West, the feast was moved to November in the 8th century, possibly to “Christianise” an old pagan commemoration of the dead, and became associated with the commemoration of All Souls – so that the whole Church – living, departed and glorified – is, in some sense, “gathered together” in one celebration of who we are, the Children of God. We are never alone.
There is a profound sense of continuity here, a sense of continuity which transcends death, time and space. This profound fact of continuity, a continuity heralded and guaranteed by Jesus’ own death and resurrection, is a continuity of discipleship. When Jesus says to us “Follow me”, there is no “sunset clause” in that invitation. He does not say to us: Follow me, for now; He does not say to us: Follow me, and we’ll see how it goes. His call is much simpler, and much more radical than that. When he says to us: Follow me, he means it – for today, for tomorrow, and to the end of time. If we are to be his disciples, than that following is an adventure without an end – an adventure we call the “communion of saints”.
I suspect that many of us, if we think of that term “the communion of saints” at all, see it solely in terms of the visions we hear of in readings from the Apocalypse, or the glorious artwork which has sprung from them. We see the saints, robed in white and crowned, carrying the palms of martyrdom, gathered round the altar in Heaven, adoring God and the Lamb. It is a beautiful vision, an inspiring vision – but I wonder if sometimes, it can seem very distant from our experience, distant from our ordinary humdrum lives – perhaps so different that we find it hard to believe that we are all called to be saints, all called to a place in that vision. Our ordinary lives are not like the lives of the “saints” that we have read about. We are not “special people” like they were. We are afraid to be saints.
Perhaps here this idea of the “continuity of discipleship” can be helpful. If we think of the communion of saints as the family of all Christ’s disciples – the Church militant on earth, the Church penitent in Purgatory, the Church triumphant in Heaven – perhaps we get a clearer view. For the saints we venerate today are not those whose discipleship is ended; they stand in the same fundamental relationship to Christ as we do – we are all his disciples, whether living or dead. The saints are not demi-gods, not divinised beings like Hercules or Aesculapius in classical mythology, they are the human disciples of Jesus who have followed him most faithfully, so faithfully that they now still share his company in Heaven. One of the strongest intuitions of the early Church was to recognise the martyrs as those whose life and death had taken on the pattern of the Lord’s own life and death, and – remaining human, just as Christ remains incarnate though now glorified – they were acceptable to the Father, since he recognised in them the face of his own Beloved Son. The early Church knew the martyrs as ordinary people, as people like themselves, whose lives had been transformed by God’s extraordinary grace. But they also recognised the link of common discipleship still binding those martyr-saints to us, since that same extraordinary grace is offered freely to us too. It is perhaps, no surprise, then, to find that in every Eucharistic celebration since the earliest days, immediately after the commemoration of Christ’s own action, his definitive “This is my Body, which is for you”, that we pray with and for all the members of that Body – the saints in heaven, the living and the faithful departed – one single body of disciples, eternally united with Christ their head.
That is the meaning of today’s feast. That is why we are never alone. There is the cause of our hope and our joy. That is a message our society in its loneliness badly needs to hear. We began today’s celebration singing: we feebly struggle, they in glory shine, but all are one in thee, for all are thine. At the end of Mass we will conclude with the words: Christ doth call one and all, ye who follow shall not fall. Let those two great texts on discipleship both be our prayer today. Amen.
1.11.14