“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…” (Hebrews 12:1,2)
The word ‘saint’, and the kindred word ‘holy’, have undergone a shift of meaning over the years. Originally they both meant separated or set apart for the worship and service of God. So from early times the Jews had their holy places and holy days which were kept separate from common use and were dedicated instead to him.
It was in the same sense that the people of Israel were called holy. “You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine” (NRSV, Leviticus 20:26, our emphasis) (see also Daniel 7:27). And in the same way St Paul addressed the Christians in Corinth by saying, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, including all the saints throughout Archaia…” (NRSV, 2 Corinthians 1:1), and he addressed the Christians in Rome with the words, “To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints…” (NRSV, Romans 1:7).
“You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy…” It is at this point that a deeper meaning of the word begins to emerge, for God is holy in that he is totally separated from moral evil and totally opposed to it. As the prophet Habakkuk exclaimed, “O Lord my God, my Holy One…Your eyes are too pure to behold evil…” (NRSV, 1:12,13).
And the very fact of being set apart for God requires that one should be in harmony with him, with the One Being who is absolutely good; and such a harmony with such a God requires moral perfection on the part of human beings also. In other words, people’s relationship with God is inseparable from their personal character which that relationship demands of them. So a Christian is one who by faith and love has entered into fellowship with God, and by obedience to his will is becoming conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29).
We have to become what we are so that, whereas all of us through our Baptism are already children of God, the saint in the modern sense is one who has become a true child of God, bearing a true likeness to the Son of God who is himself his Father’s image. In a word, God has already made us his own. What he now has to do is to make us worthy of himself, and that he can only do if we ourselves actively and sincerely desire it as the Blessed Saints have done. For they hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and therefore they are filled with all the fullness of God (Matthew 5:6).
All Saints' Day, therefore, is the feast of all those holy men, women and children who have gravitated towards the very source of holiness and are now enjoying the Beatific Vision, and are at this very moment in Heaven where they see God face to face and speak to him “…as one speaks to a friend” (NRSV, Exodus 33:11). The names of many are known to us and are honoured on their own particular feast days during the year. But there must be a far greater number who remain unknown and these we remember each year on the glittering feast of All Saints.
We must always keep in mind the fact that we are honouring Saints who are not just dead and gone – mere names in the Calendar – but real people who are alive with God now, separated from us only by the veil of invisibility which hangs between us and Heaven.
It was a true instinct of the Early Church to call the day on which the martyrs went to their death their “birthday”, the day on which they entered the glorious life of the Kingdom of God. So the Feast of All Saints is not a day of regret that lives and people so fine have gone, but a day of rejoicing and jubilation in their triumph over evil and in the bliss which is now theirs for evermore.
And as we remember them, so do they remember us. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews in a famous passage compares this life and the fellowship of the Saints to a race in one of the great athletic stadia of the Roman Empire. Down on the track are the runners, exerting themselves to the utmost, their eyes fixed on the finishing post which draws ever nearer as they go. They are all intent on the race, but are conscious of the shouts of encouragement from the vast crowd of spectators who surround the arena on every side, rising row upon row like an immense encircling cloud.
So as we run our earthly race which brings us ever nearer to Christ, our Saviour and our Judge, the Saints are close at hand, lifting us with their prayers which they offer for us in the very Presence of God himself.
All Saints’ Day comes very fittingly at the end of the Church’s Year. It began with Advent with its call to penitence and its stress upon our need of a Saviour who came at Christmas to save us from that spiritual separation from God which is the outer darkness referred to in the Gospels. So at the very outset our attention was directed at once to the end, to Our Blessed Lord who will judge us according to the opportunities which he is even now giving us.
And as the year draws to its close, there comes the Feast of All Saints in its blaze of glory, when our eyes are turned to those holy men, women and children whose salvation is complete in the Courts of Heaven. Thus the end of the year, like its beginning, focuses on the next life. That is the faithful Christian’s true home – not this transitory and troubled life here below – and while we pursue our earthly life we are reminded of the necessity to keep our eyes firmly fixed on that life with Christ and the Blessed Saints, and to look not to the things that are seen but to “…what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (NRSV, 2 Corinthians 4:18).
And such a reminder of the supernatural destiny of human beings is more than ever needed in the world of today, when people’s minds are swayed only by material values, and their hearts are occupied only with material attractions, so that, as Our Blessed Lord said of the people of his own day in Palestine, “…seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand” (NRSV, Matthew 13:13). And so they are blind and deaf to that basic truth of human life which St Augustine the Great expressed in famous words, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee”. (1)
So for faithful Christians who in St Paul’s words, “…have an undying love for our Lord Jesus Christ” (NRSV, Ephesians 6:24), there awaits at their journey’s end that same eternal joy of beholding God himself, which even now the Saints possess and which is the reward of all those who truly love and obey Our Blessed Lord.
Reference
1. St Augustine of Hippo (354-430) Confessions, Book I, Chapter I. (Words quoted above are slightly amended). Available from:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf101.vi.I_1.I.html (Accessed 15 October 2011) (Internet).