All Saints’ Day
Sermon preached by the Reverend Anna Matthews
As a child, one of the books I read over and over again was What Katy did. As a mid-Victorian morality tale for girls, it has dropped out of favour now, and its limited views on the role of women and on disability are very much of their time. I liked it because there was a bit of me that wanted to be like Katy, who, after some struggle in coming to terms with a bad accident, used her suffering to produce sweetness of character, kindness and care to all around her. Briefly, I would resolve to be kinder to my sisters, to practise a sunnier disposition, and to be a more docile and gentle character. Such resolutions usually lasted about five minutes, or until one of my sisters did something that annoyed me, at which point the real Anna would emerge, and Katy would slip reproachfully back between the covers of the book.
A similar thing can happen when I go on retreat. After 10 days or so of silent prayer and meditation, and usually after some fairly deep excavation by the Holy Spirit on the more recalcitrant parts of my soul, I come home. And for a couple of weeks the retreat lingers on: I am a better version of myself. This is the fruit of the Spirit rather than my own effort, but my mistake is often to fall into the temptation of thinking I can go on bearing the fruits of the Spirit by sheer effort of will. That if I just try hard enough holiness lies within reach.
All Saints’ Day can have a similar effect on me. I love the promise that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. I love the way in which the truth of Christianity takes on flesh in so many different lives, in so many different places and times. I am glad to be brought into one fellowship with the saints, and I depend on their prayers. But if I’m not careful I start seeing them not as an encouragement to grow in faith, nor as those who can strengthen me on my journey, but as reproaches for not being as holy as I should. True to form, I can turn even sanctity into a competitive sport.
So I look at the ardency with which St Teresa of Avila loves God, and feel the paucity of my own love. I see St Francis embracing the poor and realise anew how attached I am to possessions and reputation. I read of the courage of Alban or Oscar Romero and feel my own rather more timid heart flinch. And even while I resolve to be better at praying, to give away more of my money, or to be braver for my faith, I also know that it is the road to hell, not heaven, that is paved with good intentions, and that it is not by will alone that we will come to sanctity.
It is a lie to think that by trying hard enough we can clamber all the way up to heaven. We do not get there because we’ve decided that’s where we want to go. We get there because that’s where God has decided he wants to bring us. And we don’t need to clamber all the way up to heaven because God in Jesus has already come all the way down to earth. That’s not to say there’s no effort of will involved in becoming holy (which is what we’re all called to become), but that our will, just like all our other faculties, needs redeeming and directing and bringing into co-operation with the Holy Spirit. And if the saints not only inspire us, but sometimes show us where we have yet got room to grow in love, or in kindness, or in self-control, that’s no bad thing. We can’t be holy without also being truthful, and truthfulness includes recognising the ways in which our growth in holiness is hampered by our laziness or indifference or apathy. The saints’ example is not there to make us give up at the first hurdle because it’s too hard, but to cheer us on our way and show us what’s possible when grace is at work perfecting human nature.
Even then, we may think that the conditions of our lives or our circumstances are unpromising material for sanctity. That we would have better opportunity for showing the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – if only work wasn’t so pressing, or family life wasn’t so difficult, or our history was different, or Covid restrictions weren’t there… But the call and the path to sanctity, to being a saint, starts right where we are.
For most of us, part of this start will be giving up on the idea that we’re not the sort of person God would call to be a saint. That this is a vocation for other, holier, people. But the saints are not a separate class of super-Christian. They are simply those who show us what our human flesh is capable of when filled with the life of God. In heaven we will all be saints, and the work of sanctity might as well start sooner as later, because it will have to be done. God’s desire is to make us his – a promise given us in baptism, when we are marked with the cross and filled with the Spirit – and God’s making us his is what makes us holy, what makes his life visible in ours.
And it starts with the raw material of our lives. Just as Jesus shows us what God is like, he shows us too what humanity is like. Jesus takes on human flesh, comes to share our life, so that we know our lives are the places where he works, where he goes on taking on flesh. It’s no use wishing we had someone else’s life, for what we have is our life, and Christ’s life in us. And for that life in us to grow, to bear fruit, to change us more into his likeness, we start with where we are and what we’ve got. If you want to grow in holiness, if you want Christ’s life to be more visible in you, God will not stint in giving you opportunities. To whom can you show love (often these are the people we feel least loving towards)? Who is asking for your patience? Who needs your gentleness? Where are you being asked to be faithful? You won’t have to look hard to find the answers: our own lives are the places where God calls us to holiness – at work and at home, in our families and our relationships, in our churches and communities. On the cusp of another lockdown, this call to be saints in our own lives and communities really matters. We need from each other the fruits of the Spirit – kindness and gentleness, faithfulness and patience, love and self-control and the rest. The next time we meet again on a Sunday in church, God-willing, it will be Advent. We will be looking in hope once more for the light that shines in the darkness, and which the darkness cannot overcome. Until then, that light, in which we are made sharers through baptism, is given to us to tend, to keep aflame, to bear in the midst of the world’s darkness, and to return to when we find the darkness overwhelming.
You may not feel much like being a saint at the moment. I’m not sure I do: if I had a hibernate setting I’d be tempted to pick that. But All Saints’ Day is here to encourage us: it reminds us that the call to sanctity belongs to us all; that there is no one way of bearing Christ’s image in the world, but that in every age and every time God’s Spirit is at work, making saints whose lives show people Christ. And God’s Spirit is at work now, here, today, calling us to grow in Christ’s image and to encourage that image in each other. ‘Beloved, we are God’s children now’, wrote St John, ‘what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.’
We shall be like him. We shall be like Christ. That’s what holiness is; what sainthood means: the saints are those who are like Christ, in all the different circumstances of their lives. They show us what’s possible when divine longing and action take root in human lives. The kingdom of God grows. The fruits of the Spirit increase. The world learns how to hope. And the great cloud of witnesses swells as we respond to the love that has already claimed us in baptism, and that wants to make us holy, by making us his.