Faithful unto death

Index

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (NRSV, Matthew 5:8)
“Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (RSV Catholic edition, Revelation 2:10)

All Saints’ Day is the festival of all those who have attained the Beatific Vision, that is, those who at this very moment share God’s life and see him in his unimaginable beauty and splendour, and are filled with the eternal joy which that sharing and seeing bestow.  That bliss, which is the intended goal of human life, belongs to those souls who have been so cleansed from every taint of sin that even the thought of doing anything contrary to the holiness of God has become unthinkable.

So the life of Heaven consists in visible fellowship with God and with the Blessed Saints – with that great multitude that no one can count, who have been washed clean from their sins in the Blood of the Lamb and now stand before God in shining purity (see Revelation 7:9,14).

Now the life of the Saints in Heaven and the life of the faithful Christian here, differ only in degree.  For with both it consists in a living personal relationship with God and with one’s fellow Christians.  So, for the Blessed Saints, Heaven is only the final stage in their spiritual pilgrimage which began years before in this world and has now reached its end before the Throne of God.

Their relationship with God, like that of the faithful Christian here, began with their repentance, when they deliberately placed themselves on the side of God, and prepared to combat the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil with resolution and vigour.  So, though through the frailty of their mortal nature they often fell into sin, nevertheless they always returned to God in humble penitence, and took their place once more as forgiven sons and daughters in his Family.


In essence sin is self-centredness as opposed to God-centredness, that is, it is any attitude of mind and will whereby one organises one’s aims and desires and general way of life in separation from God.  Therefore in the midst of living in the world, the Saints devoted themselves to putting God, in place of self, as the effective centre round whom their lives revolved.  To him they surrendered their minds, their hearts and their wills, and they accepted him as the true owner and director of their whole life.

Some of the Saints, like the hermits, were called to achieve this re-orientation of their lives by shutting themselves away from the world to be alone with God.  In solitude they disciplined their bodies with asceticism of the severest kind, maintaining their fellowship with their Christian brothers and sisters only by constant prayer and intercession for them and by giving spiritual counsel to those who sought them out.


But most of the Saints have accepted life among other people as the arena in which, by growing in patience and humility, they have gradually mastered the temptations and vexations which beset them, and thus succeeded in extinguishing their self-centredness and in making way for God.

Sometimes this was achieved through a constant and unspectacular succession of little trials such as affect us all.  So it was with St Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower of Jesus: “Love needs to be proved by action.  Well, even a little child can scatter flowers, to scent the throne-room with their fragrance…That shall be my life, to scatter flowers – to miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word, always doing the tiniest things right, and doing it for love”. (1) And when she died at the age of 24, her last words summed up her whole life; they were: “My God, I love Thee”. (2)

By contrast, the martyrs have achieved that elimination of self in its final and most dramatic way by laying down their lives for Christ’s sake and so giving themselves completely to God in the defence of the Faith.


It was not that the Saints made a hobby of holiness, for that would imply an inward-looking preoccupation with self which can issue only in self-righteousness.  On the contrary, what inspired them was an outward-looking desire to love and to please God.  Thus the Saints, whatever were the circumstances and fortunes of their life here, in the end loved God above all things.  And the same must be true of us before we can share their life with God.

There is no quick or easy way to Heaven, for perfection is the result of a gradual growth, not of a sudden transformation.  The more deeply and resolutely we love God here, the sooner we shall be granted the vision of him hereafter.  The more feeble and cold our love, so much the longer we shall have to wait.


Just as fellowship with God in Heaven differs only in degree from fellowship with him here, so also does fellowship with his people.  In Heaven it is not only that each is in perfect love and charity with his or her neighbour, but all are united together by that communal relationship with God in which each shares.

On earth the counterpart of that bond is the unity of Christians within the Church of Christ.  For loyalty to Christ the Shepherd is inseparable from loyalty to his flock.  As Our Blessed Lord told his Apostles on Maundy Thursday night, the most solemn night of his earthly life, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (NRSV, John 13:34,35, our emphasis).

We see this loyal love for the Church and its members in its most illustrious form if we turn once again to the Saints and martyrs of the Early Church.  If that glorious company had put self before Christ and his Church, there would have been no Church left.  The reason why we are in this church now is that those unarmed but resolute men, women and children were so tightly bound together by their love for Christ and for his Church, that the vast embattled might of the whole Roman Empire was powerless to withstand them.  True indeed it was, as St Paul said, “…God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (NRSV, 1 Corinthians 1:25).


For the life of God’s People is inseparable from the life of Christ, as he himself declared in the Parable of the True Vine, “I am the vine”, he said, “you are the branches”, sharing in the vine’s life (NRSV, John 15:5).

And that is why disciples today who, like the Blessed Saints, are both true to their Lord and to their Lord’s Church, become living illustrations of their Lord’s own words: “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (NRSV, John 15:5).  And to those who are faithful unto death, he will give the crown of life (Revelation 2:10).

Collect for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity

“Merciful God,
you have prepared for those who love you
such good things as pass our understanding:
pour into our hearts such love toward you
that we, loving you in all things and above all things,
may obtain your promises,
which exceed all that we can desire;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever”.  Amen. (3)

References

1. St Thérèse of Lisieux (1895 – 1897) trans. by Knox, R. (1958) Autobiography of a Saint.  Thérèse of Lisieux, London: The Harvill Press.

2. Laveille, A-P (1926) trans. by Fitzsimons, M. (1928) Life of the Little Flower.  St Thérèse de L’Enfant Jésus 1873 – 1897, Dublin: Clonmore & Reynolds Ltd.

3. © The Archbishops' Council of the Church of England (2000) Collects and Post Communions: Collect for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity.  Available from:
http://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/texts/collects-and-post-communions/contemporary-language/postwhit.aspx (Accessed 05 October 2012) (Internet).