THE SUNDAY AFTER ALL SAINTS

November 6, 2022

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

 

On our observance of the Feast of All Saints, it seems opportune to ask the question: What is a saint? The word literally means “holy one.” In the Bible, the term is used to refer to all the people of God. In the Old Testament, the “holy ones” or “saints” are the whole congregation of the people of Israel; in the New Testament, the “saints” are the whole assembly of the Church.

 

Early on in Church history, however, the word “saint” took on a more precise theological meaning. In this more restricted sense, a saint is a departed Christian who exhibits three characteristics. 

 

The first characteristic is that a saint is someone whose life on earth manifested such holiness that we’re sure they must now be in heaven. In the early Church, the definitive sign of sainthood was martyrdom. For the early Christian faithful there was no question that those who’d shed their blood and given their lives rather than deny the faith were now reigning with the Lord in glory. But as the early ages of persecution waned, it became clear that Christians of exemplary holiness who’d lived and died peacefully could also reliably be counted among the saints in heaven.

 

The second characteristic is that enjoying the fullness of the Lord’s presence without any worldly worries or distractions, the saints in heaven are free to give their full and undivided attention to praying for the Church and its members on earth. 

 

Like most ancient peoples, the early Christians revered their dead. So, they often gathered for worship, devotions, and festive banquets at the martyrs’ burial places, particularly on the anniversaries of their deaths, their “birthdays into heaven.” On these days they sometimes used the horizontal slab on top of the sarcophagus as a makeshift altar for celebrating the Eucharist. The early Christians soon discovered that the martyrs’ tombs were holy places, where healings and other miracles were apt to occur. As Saint Augustine of Hippo explained in the early fifth century, when you prayed in the presence of a saint’s relics on earth, that same saint could be relied upon to pray for you in heaven, often with powerful results.

 

The third characteristic of sainthood eventually became an official decision, on the basis of the first two characteristics, that this person merited some form of public recognition in the Church’s life. 

Beginning in the third or fourth century, churches began to be dedicated and named in honor of individual saints, often built over their earthly resting places. The most famous is St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, built over the cemetery on the Vatican Hill where Peter himself was buried. In other cases, where the burial place was too remote and hard to get to, a saint’s relics might be disinterred and brought to a more conveniently located church, where they were usually placed in or under the altar. 

 

At around the same time, the Church began to designate official feast days in memory of particular saints: usually the anniversaries of their deaths—or, in some cases, the anniversaries of the translation of their relics to new resting places. And so, in the end, the term “saint” characteristically came to designate those heroes and heroines of the faith with both churches and days in the calendar dedicated in their honor. 

 

To recapitulate, then, the term “saints” refers in a general sense to the whole assembly of the faithful, and, in a more restricted sense, to those departed Christians whose holiness in this life was such that they were deemed worthy of official place of honor in the Church’s worship and calendar.

 

A problem began to emerge, however, when the Church found, after several major persecutions, that it had more martyrs than days in the year to commemorate them. So, between the fifth and ninth centuries, the Feast of All Saints grew up as a sort of catchall festival when the Church honored all the holy men and women throughout its history who’d lived and died in the faith of Christ.

 

To my knowledge, the first church to be dedicated to all the saints was the Pantheon in Rome, which had been built in the first century as a temple to all the Roman gods and goddesses. At its consecration as a church on May 13, 609, Pope Boniface IV decided to undo its former pagan dedication by rededicating it to Saint Mary and all the Martyrs. Then, just over a century later, in the year 732, Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel to All the Saints in Saint Peter’s Basilica on November 1^st, which has been kept ever since as All Saints Day in the Western Calendar.

 

So, we come full circle to the biblical understanding of the saints as a great multitude, many more than we can name or number. While we remember and celebrate some of the more notable ones on their designated days in the Church year, the Feast of All Saints reminds us of the millions of anonymous holy men and women down through the centuries who’ve gone before us to their heavenly reward: a great cloud of witnesses watching us and cheering us on as we run the race that they’ve already completed ahead of us.

 

All Saints’ Day thus reminds us, also, that we’re all called to be saints. Contrary to popular belief, sainthood is not an exclusive vocation reserved to a few elite souls of extraordinary sanctity. When we actually read the lives of the saints, we discover not stained-glass figures of otherworldly perfection, but real flesh and blood people, of every temperament and personality, exhibiting all the anxieties, neuroses, hang-ups, temptations, annoying habits, and sins that beset us all, and then some. Yet, by their perseverance in God’s grace, they show us what life in Christ can look like, in the power of the Holy Spirit. If they did it, then so can we. 

 

We receive the call to sainthood at baptism. All Saints’ Day is one of the four great baptismal occasions of the Church year. (The others are the Easter Vigil, Pentecost, and the First Sunday after the Epiphany, a.k.a. the Baptism of Christ.) On these days, it’s particularly appropriate to administer Holy Baptism, or, failing that, to renew our baptismal vows, as we shall be doing [shortly].

 

So, today we give thanks for all the saints – both the famous heroes and heroines of the faith whose lives inspire and encourage us in our Christian journey, and also the countless anonymous holy women and holy men who’ve run the same race. Today we take the opportunity to recommit ourselves to following in their footsteps, “encouraged by their examples, strengthened by their fellowship, and aided by their prayers.” In this way, we make our own the words of the wonderful hymn, “for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”