Wisd.3:1-9
Psalm 24
Rev.21:1-6a
John 11:32-44

All Saints' Sun.
(Pent.22,p.26B
superseded)

SAINTS OUR EXAMPLES

Credits: Part I: The Living Church 11/2/80 p.ll;
USCatholic 11/80 pp.6-9; Our Church
Times 11/2/80 pp.l,3; Pulpit Monthly
11/80 pp.1-2
Part II: Pulpit Resource & Preaching,
Year A
Previous: 8U,89,95 & 93,01,04

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In a world like the one we live in today, the dedicated and practicing Christian often feels lonely. For practicing Christians are surrounded by more or less unbelieving neighbors. We live in a society of low moral standards. We live in a world that seems at times to be heading for its own destruction. Christians have plenty of reasons to be discouraged and lonely.

To us in these circumstances, comes the good news of the festival of All Saints. This feast makes us aware of that vast multitude of which we are a part. It puts before us Christianity, not simply as an idea, but as a life really lived by a multitude of men and women and children in every age and in every part of the world. With that multitude at this time, we lift our hearts to the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. And so we receive encouragement and strength to continue to be loyal and faithful. Without saints, we would be tempted to make a false idol of Jesus, to think that His life was so special and so unique that we couldn't possibly imitate it. But when we see the saints and their response to God, it is a challenge to our lukewarmness, to our own tendency to keep Christ at a distance. The saints are a bridge from us to God, showing us that there are many ways to respond to God - and some of these will be ways that we can respond. Saints were not and are not crystal ball-gazers who are always right. They just loved God with all their strength and with all their heart.

That is the mystery of loving. If you love hard, love deeply, it wears down all your human bumps and knobs. And that's what the saints did best: they loved God with their whole heart and soul and mind. We need to thin about that today, for we have the idea that saints went along smoothly, this idealized notion that everything they did was absolutely perfect, and also very easy for them. It ain't so. We have an idea from earlier days, perhaps, of a person with a halo whose eyes are cast heavenward. That's not the reality. The saints were ordinary people in every walk of life, trying to serve the same Lord we are trying to serve.

In other words, they were like you and me. There are a lot of saints we don't even know about; we walk around and rub elbows with a lot of saints. Some would nominate Dorothy Day or some other person who was warm, and real to meet. But how about the husband who lives with a very difficult wife and calls her Darling? He must be a saint. How about the wife who devotedly nurses her husband through a last illness? How about a teacher who has given a love of learning to any number of students? How about an older or younger brother or sister or other relative to whom you have looked for inspiration and affection over the years? And how about that special bus driver or checkout clerk or shop foreman, or neighbor in the house next, door?

In these and many others, you have a wholehearted struggle to overcome the divided allegiance between what we could be and what we end up actually being. And some of the greatest ones were afraid, terrified, and had bouts of depression and other such human battles. The big danger is to separate the saints from our condition and put them on pedestals. They were very human. That's why they are of interest to us, and why they can be helpful to us, as heroes to look up to.

The new Testament has, in the Letter to the Hebrews (Ch.12) a very helpful picture of the saints as a crowd cheering us on, while you and I are on the team in the contest of life. And for a sports-minded child or young adult, that is helpful. It is helpful to sports-minded grown-up adults too. That is what the saints do today. Some of them are right here. They look to Jesus, trust in Jesus. Sometimes, you know, it takes lots of courage to search for God in the present circumstances of our life, when we sometimes seem to be caught in the very furnace of hell. But trust in God can transform all that heat into a refiner's fire, and all our humiliation into pure gold. The accumulated witness of the saints tells us that no one who trusts in the Lord will be finally disappointed, and that those who are used to defeat after defeat in this life, will find themselves "free at last". Looking to Jesus over a lifetime brings that glorious result.

Yet there is more. All Saints' Day reminds us of our glorious inheritance among the saints: that is true. But more than that, we have a share in Christ's own risen life. Christ's own risen life is a treasure that will be shared in lots of ways. All those who bear the seal of the Holy Spirit in Baptism are promised a part of that risen life - and that means that all who are Baptized in Christ's Name become His heirs. In this world, having lots of heirs means that there is less of an inheritance for each one. But God's arithmetic works differently from ours. Earthly riches are divided when they are shared. But heavenly riches are multiplied when they are shared.

Some people are uncomfortable that religion looks to the past. But the past, whether experienced in church or not, gives us options. When we hear again the story of St Francis of Assisi, who as a young man walked out of a good position with his father's business in order to follow God, we may have our lives disrupted, but our options are increased.

One of the most disruptive, revolutionary acts of the Church is telling the stories of the saints, those men and women who have said NO to the few choices offered by the status quo of the present, and have said YES to God Who called them out to a way or path that led them they knew not where, but they knew they had to follow it. Whenever we forget the past, we doom ourselves to a limited imagination. An inability to remember the saints produces a failure of nerve among believers of today. To remember the saints is a potentially revolutionary act.

Any time we enter the church to worship, we are not alone. The saints gather with us, as it were, looking upon us like a crowd at a stadium or ball park, cheering us on. Our spiritual forbears cheer us on: Abraham, Samson, Gideon, Mary and Joseph and all the saints. Every time we gather in worship, we join in a conversation between God and humanity, one that began long before any of us were born, and which will continue long after all of us are dead - a conversation far more rich than our mere contemporary expressions of it.

That's one reason why it can be so comforting to come to church - to be reminded that we are not in this life alone. That's also the reason why it can be so threatening to come to church. You put on your Sunday clothes and try to look respectable as you walk through the doors of the church. And you look to your left and your right, and you see names of saints of the past of St. Mark's parish. And you look to your left and your right and see saints of the present among this congregation. And you know further back about St. Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther, and Wyclif and Wesley and Savonarola. And you know in the present about Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa and John XXIII. So you adjust your clothing and fumble for your safety belt when you get to your pew, because you don't know where you'll be by the end of the service. For by Baptism, you are a saint, and God may touch you and turn your life totally around.

The saints are those whom God has led through thick and thin by a straight way. Today the saints help us to find our own straight way. Today we name the saints, and we thank God for them.

And when you kneel or stand at the Altar Rail for Communion, you might visualize the Altar Rail as extending indefinitely through time and through space, and think of the saints of the past and the saints of the present, in your lives, as being with you, invisibly and visibly, around the Throne of God.