All Saints/All Souls

 

The first of these is easy to account for. All Saints Day has had proper texts in the Prayer Book from the beginning in 1549 so, obviously, the Reformers had no objections to it. Secondly, there are countless numbers who have lived especially holy lives - so many that there isn’t room on the Church calendar to accommodate them all in any practical way. Besides, who knows how many saints there are whose virtue has escaped the public notice of the Church? So we have a day to collectively celebrate them all and to thank God for the action of His grace in our lives.
    

But, it is not simply "their" day. It is ours too. For we are numbered among the saints and, yes, I purposely use the present tense 'are numbered' with good reason, it is Biblical and factual. Romans 1:7 says, "To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." In Colossians 1:1-2 it is written: "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timotheus our brother, To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
    

Rather than just being limited to a list of those formally enrolled (or "canonised") by the Church, all faithful Christian believers everywhere are, and are called to be, saints. To this great dignity, we can only respond with the Apostle John: "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are." (1 John 3:1a)
    

Yet I know that sounds like a tall, nigh on insurmountable task. And it is, were we simply left to scratch around in the dust of our own devices. But...the God of all grace has and continues to supply the will to "all that believe in Him" to live into the saving faith He has given us and to show it forth in increasing knowledge and good works. Think of it this way, as it is directly akin to that other seemingly impossible directive in Matt. 5:48, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." The Rev. William Barclay, in his 'Daily Study Bible', gives us some helpful advice for interpreting and receiving this piece of the Good News. "On the face of it that sounds like a commandment which cannot possibly have anything to do with us. There is none of us who would even faintly connect ourselves with perfection....This word [perfect]  is often used in Greek in a very special way. It has nothing to do with what we might call abstract, philosophical, metaphysical perfection....A man who has reached his full-grown stature is [perfect] in contradistinction to a half-grown lad. A student who has reached a mature knowledge of his subject is [perfect] as opposed to a learner who is just beginning, and who as yet has no grasp of things....It is the whole teaching of the Bible that we realise our manhood only by becoming godlike. The one thing which makes us like God is the love which never ceases to care for men, no matter what men do to it. We realise our manhood, we enter upon Christian perfection, when we learn to forgive as God forgives, and to love as God loves." (The Gospel of Matthew vol. 1, 177-178) That too, then, is how we live into our call to sainthood.
    

Here's where things start getting a little more interesting. The keeping of All Souls Day and some of the attendant customs, ceremonies, and theology surrounding it have been (and continue to be) subject to no little amount of controversy. At its heart, I believe the disputation rests on the question of the purpose of prayer and supplication for those already deceased. As a further subset to that, it seems to me that there is a generic misunderstanding of the nature of what prayer itself actually is. Let me boil this down as simply as I can. Whether you come from a traditional. liturgical church like our own, an Evangelical mega church, an underground fellowship officially persecuted by the local government in some foreign land, or what have you, we all pray. If someone is sick, we pray for them. When we are inspired by the grace of God, we thank Him in prayer. There is a cause and effect relationality to all of our thanks and praise. Need something next week? Ask for it today. Thankful for blessings received yesterday? Be sure to thank the One Who gave them tomorrow. Thus, our prayers are bound up with our existence in time. As this is the only mode of existence we have experienced, it works for us. But what about God’s perspective? In heaven there is no time. God is always present. He wasn’t kidding when He revealed His name to Moses as “I AM” (as opposed to “I WAS” or “I WILL BE”). That means that our next week is present in the mind of God right now and always will be. He sees the future because there is no future for Him. So when we petition Him, we are not seeking to change His mind or alter foreseen events because that is impossible. The gift of prayer, then, is for our benefit. It is ultimately an act expressive of faith, hope and charity. To keep on with the example of prayers of petition, when we ask for needs, we are proclaiming our belief in God. We are living out our grace-infused hope that what He has proposed for our faith is true. We are doing a work of charity by recognizing and responding to the needs of others. In short, we are keeping in communion with them. When we pray, we are acknowledging the Divine ordering of the universe [- no more, and yet no less than that].
    

Keeping all that in mind, consider this, from 2 Maccabees 12: "[The] noble Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves from sin, forsomuch as they saw before their eyes the things that came to pass for the sins of those that were slain. And when he had made a gathering throughout the company to the sum of two thousand drachms of silver, he sent it to Jerusalem to offer a sin offering, doing therein very well and honestly, in that he was mindful of the resurrection: For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should have risen again, it had been superfluous and vain to pray for the dead." (vs. 42b-44) The context here is that Judas Maccabeus and his men went to engage the governor of Idumea in battle and some of the Jews of Jerusalem were killed and later discovered to have things consecrated to the gods of the Jamnites on their persons. Verse 40 attributes this as the cause of their deaths. Much more significantly, Judas finances a sin offering for these dead, demonstrating his belief in the future bodily resurrection of the dead as well as the charity of praying for their repose. This is a not insignificant instance in the Scriptures and though it is from the Apocrypha - and thus out of bounds for establishing doctrine, per the 6th of the Articles of Religion - it provides a precedent for our very human instinct to remember the dead. Again, as the Articles put it, we can read it for “example of life and instruction of manners”. And thus it leads naturally and directly into our discussion of All Souls Day
    

Consider what St. Augustine has to say in his work "On the Care of the Dead" wherein he has been discussing what the deceased may or may not continue to be aware of that happens on earth: "Let us not think that anything reaches those deceased for whom we care except what we solemnly pray with our sacrifices – either at the altar, or by our prayers, or by our alms. Yet this does not benefit all for whom such things are done, but only those who prepared for such benefit while they were yet alive. But since we cannot determine who these people are, we ought to do them for all those who have been reborn, so that we do not overlook anyone whom these benefits can and should reach. For it is better to do these things uselessly for people whom they will neither help nor hinder, than to not do them for someone whom they could help." (www.fourthcentury.com/on-the-care-of-the-dead) So, employing here the logic of Pascal's Wager, St. Augustine says it is better to do something potentially superfluous than to neglect something beneficial. Praying for the dead, then, places us in good company with our forebears in faith.
   

 In conclusion, whether we are considering the saints here on earth gathered in the visible body of the Church, those who died and await the fulfilment of their hope in Christ, or those who have come to their reward in heaven, all have in common the possession of the wedding-garment in today's [Trinity XX] Gospel. What that garment might be is described by the Rev. John Boys, sometime Dean of Canterbury during the reign of James I & VI: "The wedding garment, as Origin thinks, is Christ: or as Eusebius, the new man: or as Jerome, observing of the commandments of Christ: or as a pure conversation: or as others, an upright heart, coming to the marriage rather out of duty, than for a dinner: or as others, charity: or as Gregory, grace: or as others, faith: or as others, regeneration: consist in faith and repentance All which upon the point are the very same: so that (as our divines observe) the question is idle whether faith or godly life be this garment, because good works always proceed from faith, and faith always showeth itself by good works." (The Works of John Boys, 758)
    

And that is the hallmark of which we are reminded by these past liturgical days and by which we are called to order our lives aright: in good works proceeding from faith and that faith showing itself in our God-enabled works.

St. Luke's Day

 

"There is something peculiar in St. Luke's day, something calm and soothing connected with it; it occurs at a time when summer often revives a little before it finally goes, and sheds on us a parting smile; there is something in St. Luke's own character which speaks of healing to both body and mind, like the good Samaritan, into the wounds of both pouring oil and wine. We connect his Gospel especially with the Atonement, and the mercies of God to penitents;...To these we may add the personal history of St. Luke himself. In the service for the day he is brought before us as the faithful companion of St. Paul in the last view we obtain of the great Apostle....The recurrence therefore of this day is like the last gleaming of the year itself at this season, when a serene and bright interval precedes its close." (Isaac Williams, Sermon LXXXVIII)

Thus do we hear in a sermon by Isaac Williams, a 19th century English clergyman, student of John Keble (who is famous for his cycle of poems 'The Christian Year' about the themes of the Sundays and Red Letter Days as they occur in the Prayerbook) and member of the Oxford movement. Inasmuch as he mentions "atonement" as a central theme of Luke's Gospel, I think it is important that we spend a bit of time examining the Biblical concept of Atonement, particularly as it manifests in the observance of Yom Kippur, which began this year on the eve of September 27^th. Leviticus chapter 16 gives us the necessary details of the observance of the Day of Atonement, beginning with a reminder of the deaths of the two sons of Aaron who were consumed by fire for making an unauthorised offering of incense. As a consequence of this (and it matters not whether they were literally consumed by "fire from the Lord"), Aaron is enjoined to observe the regulations of the law with care and exactitude and not to treat the divine ordinances with casual contempt. Among the offerings, he is to take two goats. One will supply blood to be sprinkled within the holy of holies while the other will serve as the 'scapegoat'. Per verses 21 and 22: "And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat into the wilderness."

That the goat is sent bearing iniquity into an uninhabited land can be seen as an illustration of what later philosophers such as St. Augustine would call the non-being of evil. Bear with me here. He says: "All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good. But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is the Creator of it. Thus the good in created things can be diminished and augmented. For good to be diminished is evil; still, however much it is diminished, something must remain of its original nature as long as it exists at all. For no matter what kind or however insignificant a thing may be, the good which is its 'nature' cannot be destroyed without the thing itself being destroyed....Whenever a thing is consumed by corruption, not even the corruption remains, for it is nothing in itself, having no subsistent being in which to exist. From this it follows that there is nothing to be called evil if there is nothing good." (Augustine, Enchiridion, chapter 4)

So the sins of the community are sent away into a place that is perfectly identified with their pure nature of non-being, or "uninhabited-ness" if you will, which is a good lesson to us all as to both the interior dispositions which our sins create both within the self and within others (for everything we do has an impact on those around us, no matter how imperceptible) and their ultimate consequences should there be no acceptance of the insurmountable mercy of the Cross and its perfect ability to convert destructive non-being into the very fountain of all life-giving grace.

Something else to take away from the Day of Atonement is this. As the first day of the seventh Hebrew month marks the beginning of the religious new year, the celebrations of Yom Kippur on the tenth day are designed to help make a new beginning by asking forgiveness amongst one's acquaintances, fasting, not bathing and participating in extra prayers at the synagogue. On the eve of the feast, the Torah scrolls are removed from the 'Ark' and the cantor sings (in Aramaic) the Kol Nidre which translates as: "All personal vows we are likely to make, all personal oaths and pledges we are likely to take between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our personal vows, pledges and oaths be considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths."

This can seem a little unsettling when taken out of context. But, from the Jewish Encyclopedia: "The tendency to make vows was so strong in ancient Israel that the Pentateuchal code found it necessary to protest against the excessive estimate of the religious value of such obligations (Deut. 23:23). Rash and frequent vows inevitably involved in difficulties many who had made them, and thus evoked an earnest desire for dispensation from such responsibilities....The "Kol Nidre' was thus evidently developed from the longing for a clear conscience on the part of those seeking reconciliation with God." This problem of rash and excessive oath taking is also recognised in the New Testament. From St. Matthew's Gospel: "But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King....Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from the Evil One." (5: 34-35, 37) As indeed Jesus Christ here overcomes the need for swearing an oath and rather commands those who follow Him to simply tell the truth and to follow through on it, He also, being the perfect high priest surpasses the blood offerings in the Temple once for all and purifies all who believe in Him by the shedding of His own blood. There is no more need for a continuous purifying that is only symbolic. The sign-value of its usefulness is at an end. Calvary is thus both the last and the greatest Day of Atonement. The exclamation of the crowd gathered in Pilate's courtyard was even more true than they realised at the time: "His blood be on us, and on our children." And indeed that is the case for all who are in Christ.

There are some unique insights regarding this offering that are only to be found in St.Luke's narrative. At the institution of the Eucharist, this Gospel simply states: "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you." The eschatological addition of "and for many", present in the other synoptic Gospels is absent here. Perhaps this is Luke the Physician emphasising the present, healing and reconciling quality of receiving communion for each individual in the moment as a personal reminder of both the Upper Room and Calvary, rather than choosing to emphasise the availablility of this self-same grace to generations of believers to come.

And, speaking of Luke as physician, the collect provided in the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer differs from the American version thusly: "Almighty God, who calledst Luke the physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, to be an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul; may it please thee, that by the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed, through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

So, from the perspective of providing "wholesome medicines", he gives us the (unique to him) accounts of the Good Samaritan - wherein a broken body is treated and given time to heal- and the Prodigal Son - wherein a broken relationship is restored both by sincere repentance and unconditional love always on the lookout for a first inkling of desire to receive it.* And so here is revealed something else of the qualities of the living God that were (perhaps) not as accessible or explicit in the purifying rites of the Old Covenant.

It is both consistent and reasonable that these things, together with all else that is presented to us in the Gospels and reflected upon in the Epistles and the Apocalypse (and as they are cognizant of and in harmony with the traditions of the Old Testament, to be seen there as well), are meant to give us as complete a picture as we can comprehend of the Atoning work of Jesus Christ in His person and in His sacrificial death and Resurrection.

And so there is a lot to come to terms with here on this feast of the Evangelist St. Luke. But there is really only one critical thing to remember when thinking about the Atonement:

"And he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him." (Lk. 15: 20) 

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*[The father (of the parable) himself, having inculcated the 'first cause' of this desire by his very nature (the example and care he gives his children as he raised them and into the 'present' day of the parable), models the great gift of God the Father in giving to us the even the desire to be saved and to receive his Son, thereby re-confirming the Church's opposition to the "diy" heresy of semi-Pelagianism wherein we would be able to be the source of our will to be saved. In saying this, it does not mean that our will to be saved is not free, rather that it is does not originate (is not capable of originating, cf. Original Sin) within our own will, but supplied (principally) through the perfect will of God the Father by the movement of God the Holy Ghost.]