01 November 2011

‘What we will be has not yet been revealed’

All Saints … a modern icon

Patrick Comerford

Tuesday, 1 November 2011, All Saints’ Day,

8.30 a.m., The Eucharist;

Jeremiah 31; 31-34; Psalm 34: 1-10; Revelation 7: 9-17 or I John 3: 1-3; Matthew 5: 1-12.


May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Back to work after a bank holiday weekend.

How many of you were spooked last night with little children scurrying around your front door, with outstretched bags and beseeching arms as they wailed: “Trick or Treat.”

But how many of those children knew what Halloween means … that it means the eve of All Hallows, the Eve of All Saints’ Day?

It is a name that survived for centuries in the Monastery of All Hallows, the Augustinian monastery to the east of Dublin founded in 1166 and the site on which Trinity College Dublin was built in 1592.

Some of us are familiar too with All Hallows, the theological college in Drumcondra on the north side of Dublin, founded in 1842.

This day has nothing to do with spooky pranks or ghoulish games. The Feast of All Hallows is the Feast of All Saints, one of the seven great feasts of the Church, first introduced during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor, Leo VI “the Wise” (886–911).

Saints and kings on the west facade of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

In recent weeks, I found myself looking up once again at the West Fronts of Lichfield Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. In Lichfield, the west front is decorated with carved images of saints, mixed through with Anglo-Saxon and English kings. In Westminster Abbey, the west facade has ten niches that were filled in 1998 with statues of 20th century saints and martyrs, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King and Oscar Romero.

Those ten niches had been left empty from the late Middle Ages. But if you were to pick your own modern saints, the saints who had influenced you in your faith journey, modern exemplars of Christian faith and discipleship, who would you name? From the past? From the present? And would you leave a place for the saints of the future?

Three evangelists, Saint Matthew, Saint Mark and Saint Luke ... a window in All Saints’ Church, Antrim (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Our readings this morning bring together the saints of the past, the saints of the present, and the saints of the future. Together we are the Body of Christ.

The Church Triumphant and the Church Militant are one. And the living saints remember those who died but who are alive in Christ – with gratitude and as examples of true discipleship and faithfulness, that we may be blessed today (Matthew 5: 3-11) and in the future kingdom (Matthew 5: 12).

And we look forward to being saints of the future, even though we are told in the reading from I John that “what we will be has not yet been revealed” (I John 3: 3).

This day is not so much a day to remember people and what they have done as a day to remember what God has done for people and through people. It is a testimony to and celebration of the fact that the Gates of Hell have never prevailed against the Church. For God has redeemed people from every generation to be his own.

And together we are blessed, happy, fortunate. The Greek word repeated constantly in the beatitudes in our Gospel reading, μακάριος, is loaded with meaning: it can mean blessed, saintly, happy fortunate.

Today we remember that there is a prayerful, spiritual, sweet communion between the whole church, between all of us gathered before the Lamb on the Throne (Revelation 7: 9), and that there are no barriers of time and space – past, present or future – for those barriers have been broken, shattered, by Christ in his death and resurrection. And in that we are blessed, sanctified, fortunate, happy, to rejoice.

As we say together later in this Eucharist at the fraction: “We being many are one body, for we all share in the one bread.”

And so, may all we think, say and do, be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Collect:

Almighty God,
you have knit together your elect
in one communion and fellowship
in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord:
Grant us grace so to follow your blessed saints
in all virtuous and godly living
that we may come to those inexpressible joys
that you have prepared for those who truly love you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

God, the source of all holiness
and giver of all good things:
May we, who have shared at this table
as strangers and pilgrims here on earth,
be welcomed with all your saints
to the heavenly feast on the day of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This sermon was preached at the All Saints’ Day Eucharist in the institute chapel on 1 November 2011.

A challenge to the Church as winter closes in

Winter has closed in on Skerries ... the Harbour at dusk late this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

Winter has closed in on Skerries. The clocks have gone back, darkness is closing in earlier and earlier each evening, and the rain and the winds had returned this afternoon.

Halloween had already arrived earlier in the day, with bonfire material being collected throughout Fingal in north Co Dublin – and being lit in some places. Younger teenagers were scurrying through fields, little children in costumes were holding parents’ hands as they wandered through the streets of Lusk, Rush and Skerries, building up their anticipation and expectation for the evening ahead.

One imaginative and creative mind in Lusk already had a humorous take on the evening ahead, with a flying witch crashing into a pole on her brookstick.

Halloween crash landed in Lusk this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

In Skerries, the cafés and pubs were busy, despite the wind and rain. The tide was high, and the waters in the harbour were swelling and were a mixture of grey and Joycean snot-green in colour.

Back in Olive on Strand Street, where they know how to make the best double espresso, there was still an opportunity to sit in the open, albeit under the awning, and watch the rain pour down on Strand Street.

The best double espresso ... a table at the Olive in Strand Street, Skerries, this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Later, the beach at the South Strand was deserted apart from a few strollers and a dog or two, and the tide was high.

But we are never alone. Tomorrow is All Saints’ Day. If it is not celebrated appropriately in our churches, with the Eucharist, how do we explain to a younger generation what Halloween is all about?

It is the Night of the Living Dead ... for the saints are alive, and we are part of the Communion of Saints, the Church Triumphant (Ecclesia Triumphans) and the Church Militant (Ecclesia Militans) are one Churchof and are together.

Halloween, or the Eve of All Hallows, is the evening before celebrating All the Saints, All the Holy Ones in Glory, the Saints of every time and place. This is the Eve of a Great Feast of Light – the Solemnity of All Saints, the saints in glory who have “inherited the light” (Colossians 1: 12-13), whether we are alive or dead, whether we have been canonised or faded into obscurity, whether they have given heroic examples in their lives, or they are unsung and unknown. We are all with God in endless joy.

And if we cannot explain Halloween and All Saints’ Day, how can we hope to explain the greater truths of Christmas and Easter?

On my way home, I was taken aback to see Christmas lights already lit up on the facade of Saint Joseph’s Church in Terenure. Why – it’s not even Advent?

But then the Church beyond Dublin is finding it hard to make the connection between being and doing, explaining and living. As the afternoon turned to evening, the news came that the Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, the Right Revd Graeme Knowles, has resigned.

If the dean’s resignation, and the earlier, principled resignation of Canon Giles Fraser, are not to be in vain, then Bishop Richard Chartres must quickly reverse the disastrous decisions that have been taken about the protesters camped out in Paternoster Square.

Already, the credibility of the Church is being sorely tested.