Not how it should have been: a sermon
All Saints’ Day Sermon by Jamie Howison
Tonight we mark the Feast of All Saints’, so let me tell you what should have been happening over this weekend.
There should have been a group of fourteen people from our community on retreat at St John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, as has happened at this time for the past two years. Those fourteen people would have not only had the chance to savour all that Collegeville has to offer—a couple of thousand acres of wildlife preserve, an art gallery, the St John’s Bible, a world-renowned pottery studio, and the quiet splendour of the monastic liturgies—but they’d also be experiencing the liturgical observance of this feast day. At St John’s the monastic community celebrates things across three days:
On October 31 the Vigil or Eve of All Saints’ is marked in the Abbey Church, with banks of candles, clouds of incense, and a procession into the church in which a litany of saints is chanted. Saint after saint after saint is named—both the biblical saints and those from the long story of the church whose sainthood has been recognized in the Catholic tradition—and as each name is chanted the whole congregation responds, “pray for us.” Calling on saints to pray for us is not really something that much figures in our tradition, but it is a common practice in Roman Catholicism, and whatever you might make of it, it does remind you that the Body of Christ transcends time and space. For those minutes of that litany, you are meant to inhabit the same church community as St Peter and St Paul and St Benedict, St Scholastica, and St Francis of Assisi, and, and, and…
Then today Morning Prayer, Midday Prayer, the Eucharist, and Vespers are all framed using readings, prayers, and hymns that call the participants to remember that fact. We are part of this one body, and those who lived and died long before we were born are also part of our heritage and our family.
And tomorrow the monks will mark All Souls’ Day. That’s a tradition that goes back about 1000 years, and the idea was that on All Souls’ the church needed to remember all who have died and who—maybe—have yet to move on from purgatory. Now that’s a concept that definitely doesn’t figure in our tradition, and in fact isn’t nearly so prominent in Catholicism as it once was. In the context of the observance at St John’s Abbey, it is a time to prayerfully recall those who have died, and most particularly the monks of the community who have died over the past year. The observance is focussed on a procession to the Abbey cemetery, where a service of remembrance and blessing is held. It is quite something to stand in the cemetery alongside of row and row after row of identical headstones, and to do that alongside of those monks who are standing on the very ground in which they will one day be buried. Strangely, though it can be chilly out in that cemetery—Minnesota’s November being not unlike ours here in Winnipeg—there is real warmth in that liturgy.
The people who have gone on retreat with us over those days always come away delighted, moved, filled with things to ponder, and already planning a return visit. But it isn’t happening this year, and even for the monastic community at St John’s it won’t be what they are accustomed to doing, because they too are wrestling with the upheaval of the pandemic.
Let me tell you something else that should have been happening. Danielle Morton, Rachel, and I should have been getting ready to begin our annual retreat at St John’s as part of our work with their Communities of Calling initiative. In that retreat we would be reconnecting with the team leaders from the other thirteen church congregations from across the states that are part of the program, we’d have been joining in with at least some of the monastic prayer, attending workshops and exploring more deeply the ways in which themes of vocation and calling can be put to work in our various congregations. Instead, the three of us will log into a Zoom conference at 11 tomorrow morning, and pretty much stay there until 4:15 in the afternoon.
And let me tell you something that should have been happening tonight. As we’ve done for years now, in the weeks leading up to All Saints’ day I’ve been gathering the names of people who have died who folks from our community would like to have remembered in prayer tonight. Many are the names of people directly connected to us—loved ones, friends, parents, grandparents, mentors, teachers—while others are the names of people from across the centuries whose lives and work have shaped us—saints, writers, martyrs, musicians, artists. In approaching things this way, we have folded together All Souls’ Day with All Saints’ Day, which I think is just fine. It strikes me that Jesus was as interested in the plain, the ordinary, and the struggling—in the last, the least, the lost, and the little—as he was in anyone or anything else. Jesus would be delighted to have your grandma named right alongside of St Benedict and St Francis, thank you very much!
We will read those names aloud in our Prayers tonight as our own litany of the saints, which will be shared back and forth between Andrew and me. But here’s what will be missing. When Helen’s name is read, I won’t be able to glance over there to see Martin’s face, and when Gloria’s name is read I won’t be able to look over here to catch Don’s eye. Same when the name Alfred is read, or Charles, Steve, Saint Hilaire, Adam, Chris, Todd, Scott, George, or David. As we speak aloud those names in prayer I will see the faces of Steve, Katharine, Robin, Kathleen, Pierre and Krista, John and Lynn, and George, Kathleen, Ann, Dave, Sharon. The names remembered are matched to faces who should be here tonight.
But it isn’t how it should be, is it? And here in our city we are know that things with this pandemic have been getting worse rather than better. After such a good summer, we anticipate winter with physical distancing, severely limited gatherings, worry about our personal care homes and hospitals… it really isn’t how it should be.
But here’s the thing. On this day we are reminded that Christ’s church really does transcend space and time, and that those who have gone before us are a big part of what has made us who we are. We are part of a long line that reaches—generation by generation by generation—right back to that rag tag bunch who followed Jesus around the Galilean countryside and held on to those stories and teachings so they could pass them along. Which is what has been done, generation after generation after generation.
And over those generations, others have had to hold light and hope against the darkness and fear. There have been other pandemics and epidemics, a good many of them worse than this one. The Christian body has been confronted with wars, depressions, pandemic, persecutions… and remember that’s not all long-time-ago stuff all but lost in the mists of time. There were instances of all of those things in the 20th Century.
And yet through it all, Jesus, the head of the church and our Good Shepherd, kept saying, “Be not be afraid,” for I am accompanying you in this, even unto death. Remember, he says, the upside-down blessings I pronounced on the meek, the poor in spirit, those who mourn and those who are persecuted? I will always bring light out of darkness, and though it can feel like the light has been all but extinguished and that hope has faded, my Light is what will have the final word. In the meantime, my people, you can and should remember those who have gone before you, and you can let yourselves grieve and lament your losses. Speak your fears to me, and speak your sorrows, just as my people over the centuries have done. Your beloved who have died are safe with me; trust that. As the psalmist insists,
Weeping may linger for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
So yes, I do grieve the things that we are unable to do together this All Saints’ Day, and I trust—as best I can—that next year will be different. I believe that joy does come with the morning; I just hope and pray that this figurative night in which we dwell will not linger too unbearably long.
Blessings on this feast day.
