All Saints’ Day
The Reverend Canon Michael Hull, our Assistant Priest, writes:
All Saints’ Day, 1 November, is a good time to contemplate our Christian lives in terms of our daily service to others and our baptismal hope for heaven, by way of our union with those who have followed Christ in such exemplary fashion as to be called ‘saints’. As the hymn goes, ‘Oh, when the saints go marching in/ Oh, when the saints go marching in/ Oh Lord I want to be in that number/ When the saints go marching in.’
We mark All Saints’ Day in our Scottish Episcopal liturgical calendar with this Collect: ‘Almighty God, whose people are knit together in one holy Church, the mystical Body of your Son: grant us grace to follow your blessed saints in lives of faith and commitment, and to know the inexpressible joys you have prepared for those who love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever’. The Collect asks two things of God. First, the grace to follow the example of the saints, our forebears in the faith, who have lived lives of faith and commitment. Second, to know the inexpressible joys of heaven. Both prayerful requests are noteworthy in our Christian lives.
As God’s people, we are ‘knit together’. St Paul speaks eloquently of his desire that all Christian ‘hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God’ (Col. 2.2). Here Paul is building on an ancient theme found explicitly in the Old Testament, that is, the knitting together of souls as with Jonathan and David, the ‘soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul’ (1 Sam. 18.1; cf. Deut. 13.6; 3 Jn 14). Again, it is Paul who teaches us clearly that we are one because of our incorporation into Christ at our Baptism (Gal. 3.28). This unity transcends death. We are one with all the baptised: those living and those departed this life in God’s faith and fear.
This knitted unity is sometimes called the ‘mystical body of Christ’ based on Paul’s words: ‘For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptised into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit’ (1 Cor. 12:12–13; cf. 14–31; Col. 1.18; 2.18–20; Eph. 1.22–23; 3.19; 4.13). What holds us together is the mysterious life of grace we live in Christ.
That mysterious life begun in Baptism extends from this world into the next one, from an earthly existence into a heavenly one. Thus, our Collect asks not only for the grace to follow the good example of the saints on earth, but also to follow them to the inexpressible joys of heaven. Here we are reminded that our lives of grace are neither earthly nor timebound. Instead, they are purposeful, finding their ultimate fulfilment only in the Ultimate, that is, in God. Many of the Christian catechisms say it clearly in a question-and-answer format: Q. What is the chief end of human beings? A. Humans’ chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. The inexpressible joy of heaven is sometimes called the beatific vision, meaning the destination of those redeemed in Christ, the blessed (the beati in Latin).
Part-and-parcel of that vision is the communion with God and the saints, the blessed. God, three-in-one, is a mysterious communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In like manner, the communion of saints is bound, knit together, in the mystery of God’s grace. The closest we come to it this side of heaven is in the sacrament of Holy Communion. It is there that Jesus is truly and really present among us on earth as we gather with each other to celebrate his blessed passion and death, his glorious resurrection and ascension and where we await most ardently the coming of his Kingdom.
Let us mark All Saints’ Day 2024 with the biddings of our Collect in mind as desires to focus our resolve to be saints. On the one hand, let us open our minds and hearts to the good example given by others in such wise that we inculcate their example and put it into practice by spiritual and corporal acts of mercy in their company. On the other hand, let us recall that we are destined, again in their company, to behold God face-to-face with them, ‘for whoever does the will of God lives forever’ (1 Jn 2.17).
The Reverend Canon Professor Michael Hull has been an Assistant Priest at St Vincent’s since 2015. He is also the Principal of the Scottish Episcopal Institute.
