For All Saints
The beauty of being connected to a great cloud of witnesses
Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
A Collect for the Feast of All Saints Day
November 1st is The Feast of All Saints Day. I had the opportunity to create this collect video to commemorate the day. You can find the original, created for my diocese, on their Facebook page.
I haven’t always understood or been comfortable with feast days like this, particularly this one. For along time I misunderstood it, thinking that my Roman Catholic friends were praying to the saints, asking them to grant their requests or to help them from heaven. And to be fair, some of them were / are. They apparently don’t rightly understand either. That is not what All Saints Day is about, not at all!
The idea of idea that Hebrews 12 is a lived reality makes us protestants a little uncomfortable. “We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.” Say what? As a new Anglican, I remember The Feast of All Saints being a little disorienting.
However, on my first All Saints day, that Sunday morning my priest, the late Fr. Thomas McKenzie, led the congregation in a service of remembrance. He didn’t preach or explain, he simply invited people to come forward and share a story of someone who was a saint in their life. Some people shared stories of a “classic” saints, Saint Thomas the Apostle, Saint Augustine, ect. Others shared stories of modern saints like Teresa of Calcutta or Dorthy Day. Some even shared storied of their grandparents or Sunday school teachers. It was a beautiful service remembering the lives of saints from every generation that have gone before us.
This year, on All Saints day I was thinking of John and Donna Hollis, my pastor and his wife from the church I grew up in. They are still alive and doing well. I remembered them because since I gave my life to Christ they have been examples of holiness and Christlikeness. I know they aren’t perfect but their lives have been examples of Jesus to me.
This is what it means to be a saint, to live in such a way that Jesus and his kingdom are put on display through your life!
In the Eastern church they don’t have official designations and requirements for sainthood like the Roman Catholic Church. Rather, they look for the fruit of the Spirit, they look for a life of holiness and surrender to Christ. I think this is closer to our Anglican way of understanding. I also think it’s closer to the Apostles Paul’s understanding, who believed we were all saints if indeed we have given our life to God and are now In Christ. Now, we just need to live like it, through the power of the Holy Spirit! And maybe those saints, living and dead, can be examples of how we do that!
PS: I love talking about our understanding of this great cloud of witnesses, praying to saints, and things like that. But I’ll save that for another post. For now, just remember the saints who have gone before and let their lives inspire your own!
