FROM THE BOUNDARY: All the saints

Today is the Feast of All Saints, all the saints. But remember, Feast Days are always Feast Days of Christ. Saints are saints because the Christ life was in them. This Feast Day is a celebration of Christ in St Francis, St Benedict, St Therese, St Gertrude – in the entre Communion of Saints. Yet today’s Feast remarks also the glorious acts of Christ in his people, all of us one body in Christ.

So the word ‘saint’ has two senses. In the early years of the Church, all Jesus’ followers were called ‘saints’ (1 Cor. 1:2), by baptism called to be children of God, walking with Jesus the high road to sanctification. Are we walking too? The second sense: those who, after their death, the Church has especially recognised as having sufficiently demonstrated, in life and death, the power of God’s Grace.

Do you have a favourite saint, one who has touched your life in some way? Mine include St Francis, St Francis de Sales, St Germaine, St Gertrude and St Joseph. I call them my companeros, my friends, and in my life’s adventures I recall them as if they are with me. You probably have a saint associated with your birthday, as I do. Mine’s St Giles, hermit and lover of animals. I guarantee you’ll find a saint-friend who’ll stand with you always.

With the saints, it’s not their influence, or power, or even great virtue which is the mark of their sainthood. It’s the Grace of God which worked to change their lives – as it can ours. They were mostly very ordinary people. St Francis was the son of a cloth merchant. St Germaine was a shepherdess. Some had dodgy dreams, like the Patron of Priests, St John Vianney. St Peter betrayed our Lord. St Paul began by persecuting him. There’s hope for us all. Jesus’ fellowship is with all mankind.

All of us, with the saints, share the same kind of hopes, fears, temptations, and commit the same follies. If the saints were sinners made holy, the Grace which touched them can also touch us. Their holiness arose not simply by doing wonderful things, but by loving God in the ordinary, in making the choices we’re all called to make – and so by attempting to live, as best a human can, the life of Jesus.

Maybe you ask whether the saints each had a secret shared only with God – and whether you too can share it. Yes they did and, by God’s Grace, you can.

First: hearing the call. It comes in different ways. It may be a thunder clap, sudden, unexpected. We may hear it in the storms and darknesses of our lives. It may come softly, insistently. When it comes, it’s irresistible. God works in a way we can understand.

Then, in their way, they proclaimed the good news, and so must we in ours. Remember, church-going isn’t enough. God is everywhere, not just at the Altar, the God of a box. He’s the God too of the factory and farm, the university and Dodds, of Nelson St and Parliament. There’s nowhere He is not. When Jesus touches us, he raises us all to Life, man and woman, Jew and gentile, slave and free, straight and gay. His Kingdom isn’t above the clouds. It’s in the heart which beats with love. Does yours?

Then, in their way, they lived the cross – and so must we. There’s the cross of suffering, of Christ crucified. How often we’re nailed to it. But, then, the empty cross, the cross of the Christ of Glory, of our own victory over our littleness of thought and deed. Yes, let the Christ Light come.

Finally, courage – following Jesus no matter where he leads. It may be the assassin’s bullet. It may be the contempt of the world. Are you ready? It’s going to hurt. Don’t worry. Your companeros will be with you, and Jesus loves you in your every breath.

Go safely, then – until the next time.

Doing, from the boundary: “We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love” (St Mother Teresa of Calcutta).