Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
The Episcopal Church, like other “liturgical” churches, has a collection of saints that we honor with feasts and fasting. Some are ancient and some are new. Some were terrible people in modern terms and some unbelievably good. Some are saints because they did incredible things and others simply because they died a particular way (we call them martyrs). And within all of this diversity, we can see beauty, diversity, and all manner of possibility.
We often reserve All Saints Day in our hearts as the day to remember the dead—the saints we knew in life and cherish in death. This seems useful to our understanding, if not a bit unfinished. It strikes me that when we do this, it is like we’re only doing half of our homework.
Years ago, at another congregation, after a saintly figured died, the most common refrain I heard was how “he taught me everything I know.” But none of these people acted like him. This felt illustrative of modern sainthood—that we might be so moved by a person that we make an icon of them and yet fail to act much like them ourselves.
We’re being invited, not to think the best of a loved one, but to see the best of what we are capable of—to learn from one another and do things in our world that match the devotion to Christ others shared before. Not that we might be numbered among the saints, but that the saints display a way of being that is not just attainable—but something most anyone could do.
With love,
Drew