The Communion of Saints: Our Own Festival Day

At the end of this month arrives All Saints’ Day! The celebration of the Feast of All Saints recapitulates our own redemption in Christ and a joyful contemplation of our own personal and corporate future in the One Who is the Resurrection and the Life. It is the great feast day of the Family of God, the Mystical Body of Christ, that Church of God which is the redeemed human race. What the Saints in glory are, we are promised to be. 1st November reminds us of our present life in the communion of the Holy Spirit and of our anticipated life, to be shared with all of Christ’s beloved, in the age of the world to come, an age transfigured by grace. Blessed be God in His Saints: what the Saints once were, we are now; what they are now, we shall become. All Saints’ Day is the family celebration of the People of God.

The Church exists in three inseparable and organically-united states from now until the End of the world, the Last Day, the Day of Jesus Christ: 1. the Church Militant, alive on earth today, 2. the Church Expectant in the Intermediate State, Paradise or the Bosom of Abraham, and 3. the Church Triumphant in the glory of the Blessed Trinity in Heaven. The celebration of All Saints’ Day is the glorious feast of the whole Catholic Church of God, in glory and on earth, universal across space and time and beyond time. All Saints’ Day breaks through the monotony and banality of this often-dreary era with the splendour and joy of our life in Christ now, and in the heavenly Jerusalem.

The Church on earth prays for all who have died in the Faith of Christ, asking the Lord’s blessing and mercy upon them (Book of Common Prayer 74-75, 268, 332-336, 598). The Church accompanies the death of all Christ’s dear children with prayer for them to the Lord. Simultaneously, when the Church, guided by the Holy Ghost, bears witness to the holiness of certain reposed Christians, the faithful, in addition to prayer made for them, are taught by the good examples of their lives and thus place these souls before themselves as examples to be emulated and followed.

When the common conviction possessed by the Church of the sanctity and heroically virtuous life of a reposed Christian is confirmed by special testimony, such as spiritual gifts of healing, martyrdom, bold confession of the Faith, self-giving love offered in sacrifice for Christ and the Church, and in particular, miracles occurring after the death of the holy person when he is remembered in prayer, the Church then canonises the person in a unique manner. In such a case, the holy person, recognised by the Church as having once been a member of the Church Militant here in earth and now a member of the Church Triumphant in glory, is commemorated in the Liturgy of the Church: ‘canonisation’ refers to the inclusion of the blessed individual in the liturgical calendar and in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist and the Divine Offices with special collects and scriptural readings.

From that multitude which no man can number, which rejoices on another shore, in a greater light, God deigns to show the Church on earth a select few to be our spiritual elder brothers, sisters, guides and friends. To be canonised is to be placed in the Canon, the order or rule, of the Church’s liturgical life and observance, the yearly cycle of prayer and praise rendered unto God the Holy Trinity, in recognition of the Saint’s eternal destiny in Christ and communion with the earthly Church. Our Common Prayer Book in the American edition contains twenty such feast days for particular Saints, with provision for additional celebrations of other Saints as mandated by Church authority (BCP 258). A Saint, or holy one (Hagios, in Greek), is thus said to have been ‘raised to the Altars’ of the Church, as we on earth are assured by God that the beloved is in Heaven, the Beatific Vision, the Kingdom of God.

The Church, which is the Communion of Saints and the Family of God, honours and glorifies those who are the friends of God in a wonderfully intense way in Heaven (Saint John 15.14-15). Our Divine Lord receives His saintly friends into the heavenly mansions in fulfilment of His promise: that where I am, there ye may be also (Saint John 14.3). In acknowledgement of this grace given by Him Who is Life and Light to His heavenly companions, the Church in prayer praises the struggles and virtues of those so glorified in Christ and seeks their assistance in intercession and example as we determine to grow in the holiness and love of God and in avoidance of sin and advancement in the moral and spiritual life: O God the King of Saints, we beseech thee that, encouraged by their example, strengthened by their fellowship, and aided by their prayers, we may attain unto everlasting life (1929 Scottish BCP).

‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours’ (Revelation 14.13). In accomplishment of the Scriptures, the Church indeed blesses those who have entered into the beatitude of the Risen Lord. The glory which the Father has given the Son forever is granted as mercy and grace to those who reign with Jesus in the heavenly country; and so the Church, still in pilgrimage on earth, moving toward the Promised Land, rightly honours those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith (Saint John 17.22). The Church in her devotion and liturgy receives righteous men and women as righteous men and women; brothers and sisters of Christ in the glory of the Kingdom remain our brothers and sisters in the Church; our communion of prayer with those who have passed beyond the veil reinforces our love for them, our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters in the sacred society of God (Saint Matthew 10.41, 12.50). Our fellowship in Jesus Christ, the Head and Priest of the Body, with the Virgins, Martyrs, Apostles, Confessors and Doctors is never interrupted, and continues for ever with those in the heavenly realm (I Saint John 1.3). The Saints are near to the Throne of God and the Lamb and pray for the Church on earth, praising and extolling the Lord of Hosts (Revelation 5.11).

Our communion with the Saints permanently realises the bond between Christians on earth and the heavenly Church:

But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect (Hebrews 12.22-23).

Or to summarise our faith and life in the Communion of the Saints as expressed in that incomparable 1549 English Liturgy of the Anglican Tradition:

And here we do give unto thee most high praise, and hearty thanks, for the wonderful grace and virtue, declared in all thy saints, from the beginning of the world: And chiefly in the glorious and Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord and God, and in the holy Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles and Martyrs, whose examples, O Lord, and stedfastness in thy faith, and keeping thy holy commandments, grant us to follow. We commend unto thy mercy, O Lord, all other thy servants, which are departed hence from us, with the sign of faith, and now do rest in the sleep of peace: Grant unto them, we beseech thee, thy mercy, and everlasting peace, and that, at the day of the general resurrection, we and all they which be of the mystical body of thy Son, may altogether be set on his right hand, and hear that his most joyful voice: Come unto me, O ye that be blessed of my Father, and possesses the kingdom, which is prepared for you from the beginning of the world.

Happy Feast Day! God bless you!