On Wednesday of last week, we celebrated one of the great festivals of the Church’s year, All Saints Day. I say All Saints Day is one of the great festivals of the Church’s year because both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church regard All Saints Day as a day of eucharistic obligation, that is, as far as the Church is concerned, all confirmed Christians are obliged to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion on that day. But All Saints Day is a day the Church’s year that should be important to each and every one of us from a very personal point of view too.
Saints, as I’m sure we all know are holy people, but that doesn’t mean that saints are perfect people. According to the Scriptures, anyone who is dedicated to God is a saint and dedication to God includes humbling ourselves before God and asking his forgiveness when we get things wrong, and even saints get things wrong. So there are as many saints as there are people who’ve dedicated their lives to God. There are famous saints who have their own day in the Church’s year, people like the Evangelists, Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John but, as we read in the Book of Revelation, there’s a vast multitude of saints which no one can number. Most of those saints are not well known to anyone except God and those who know or knew them personally. And some of those saints will be people who were, or are, known to us personally, people who’ve helped, encouraged and inspired us on our own Christian journey, hopefully towards sainthood. These saints don’t have their own day in the Church’s calendar, so All Saints Day is the day we remember and give thanks for their lives and examples too. And so All Saints Day is a day that should be important to all Christians from a very personal point of view, and so it’s a day that all Christians should celebrate.
Having said that, I do know that there are people who do have some difficulties with celebrating All Saints Day (and by that I don’t mean the difficulty of dragging themselves away from home, the TV, the football or whatever else it might be and actually coming to church on a dark November evening!). Some people do have difficulties with, and at times even objections to the very idea of celebrating the lives of saints, and perhaps especially with the idea of praying to the saints.
As we know, we in the Church are called Christians, and we’re called that because we’re disciples of Jesus Christ. As disciples of Christ, our aim is to follow, as closely as we possibly can, the teaching and example of Christ. And our purpose in doing that is to grow more and more like him until our lives mirror his life, in so far as that’s possible for us. In fact we could say, and many have and do, that to be a Christian is to be Christ-like. So why is All Saints Day, and the saints themselves, so important in and to the Church? If we’re called to be like Christ, why do we make such a fuss about the saints who were, after all, simply Christ’s disciples just like us?
Actually, one of the reasons we regard All Saints Day and the saints themselves as so important is precisely because they were just like us. They were just like us because they were people who tried to the best of their ability to follow Christ’s teaching and example in their lives. Just like us, they often had problems being as Christ-like as they wanted to be. But the saints were people who persevered in trying to be Christ-like – they never gave up no matter what the difficulties, and for many of them, that meant persevering unto a martyr’s death. And this is one reason the saints are important to us. Because they were just like us, their perseverance in times of difficulty and danger can encourage us to persevere when we go through difficult times in our discipleship. Because they were just like us, their lives and example can inspire us to be more Christ-like by being more like them. And because they were just like us, their teaching can help us to follow Christ’s teaching more closely. So the saints are important to us and it’s right that we should venerate their memory, especially on All Souls Day.
I’m sure you know these things already, but another question that’s asked from time to time, even by people who would agree with what I’ve said so far, is why do we pray to the saints and ask the saints to pray for us? After all, Jesus’ prayer was always addressed to the Father and we believe that we have only one Advocate with the Father, and that’s not the saints, but Jesus himself. Scripture also tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. So if both God the Son and God the Holy Spirit intercede for us, why do we need the prayers of the saints too? To answer that, I think we first need to take a step back and say something about prayer itself.
We believe that God knows all our needs, so we don’t need to tell him what we need or ask him for what we need. Jesus himself told us this;
“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”
So why then, do we need to pray at all?
That’s often answered by saying that prayer is helpful in building up our relationship with God, it’s about spending time with God and talking to God in the way we do with friends and loved ones. And that’s true. But more than that, prayer is about faith. Prayer is a demonstration of faith. If you think about it, when we pray, aren’t we expressing our belief in God? Otherwise, what are we doing? Who are we talking to? Also, when we pray to the Father through Jesus Christ, as we usually do in church, aren’t we expressing our faith in Jesus, not only as our Lord and Saviour, but as our heavenly Advocate? And when we pray in the power of the Spirit, and we invariably begin our intercessions in church by saying this is what we’re doing, aren’t we expressing our faith in the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s presence with us too? And when we pray, aren’t we also demonstrating our belief that God does hear us and can and will answer us? So prayer is a demonstration of faith, and this is something that’s expressed very clearly in Scripture.
Jesus told us that faith, even faith as big as a mustard seed, can move mountains. And yet we read in the Gospels that when a young boy possessed by an unclean spirit was brought to Jesus’ disciples, they couldn’t cast the spirit out and Jesus, clearly exasperated by their lack of faith, had to cast the spirit out himself. Then we read this;
‘…when Jesus had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”
The implication of Jesus’ words here are that the disciples couldn’t cast out this unclean spirit because they lacked the faith to do it, and their lack of faith was manifested in a problem with their prayer. So prayer is a very powerful demonstration of faith. But what are we expressing about our faith, what are we expressing our belief in, when we ask the prayers of the saints?
First of all, and perhaps most important of all, we’re expressing our faith in the Resurrection. If we ask the prayers of the saints, we must believe that the saints are still living, there’d be no point in asking their prayers if not because they wouldn’t be able to hear us. So in asking their prayers we’re expressing our faith that the saints have been raised to eternal life and that they now live in God’s presence in heaven.
One of the core beliefs of the Christian faith is the Communion of Saints, that spiritual, some would say mystical bond between all God’s holy people, both living and departed. This is something that’s alluded to in Hebrews 12 in the “great cloud of witnesses” that surrounds us, the
‘…innumerable angels in festal gathering, … the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and … the spirits of the righteous made perfect…’
who dwell with God and Jesus in the “heavenly Jerusalem”. Then, in the Letter of James we’re told that,
‘The prayer of a righteous person has great power..’
whilst in the Book of Revelation we find an image of
‘… golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints’,
an image of the prayers of the saints, the prayers of the righteous, being presented to “the Lamb”, to Christ, in heaven.
We can see in these words and images an understanding of prayer, and of our asking the prayers of the saints as an assent to our belief in the Communion of Saints, our belief that we never are truly alone but are always surrounded by a multitude of angels and saints, and that’s very important because, as Jesus said,
“…where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
So our belief in the Communion of Saints gives us the assurance that Jesus is always with us. He is always with us because we are never alone; we are always surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses. These words and images can also help us to see asking the prayers of the saints as an expression of our belief in the power of prayer. We can also see in these words and images that our prayers to the saints are not in any way an attempt to bypass Christ in his role as our Advocate with the Father, but simply asking the saints to assist us in our prayers. In effect, we don’t pray to the saints, we ask the saints to pray for us, just as we pray for others and ask people to pray for us – to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The saints are a great help to us in so many ways. They can encourage us when being a disciple of Christ is hard. They can inspire us to be more Christ-like in our own lives. And they can help us, not only through their teaching, but also through their prayers. It would be wrong to worship the saints, even on All Souls Day, but it’s right to venerate them, so let’s do that. Let’s venerate the saints by giving thank for their lives and examples, and let’s ask them to help us show the faith they lived, and very often died for, by asking for their prayers.
Amen.
Propers for All Saints Sunday (31st Sunday in Ordinary Time – 4th before Advent) 5th November 2023
Entrance Antiphon for All Saints
Let us rejoice in the Lord and keep a festival in honour of all the saints.
Let us join with the angels in joyful praise to the Son of God.
The Collect for All Saints
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 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.
The Readings for All Saints
Missal (St Mark’s)
Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14
Psalm 24:1-6
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12
RCL (St Gabriel’s)
Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 34:1-10
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 