More thoughts on the saints

We keep Sunday 1st November as All Saints Day, and 2nd November as All Souls Day...It is a basic tenet of Christian life that the 'communion of saints' is with us in this world and also beyond the grave. I always find this season both encouraging and challenging As the year draws towards its close we move in the Church's year from thinking about day to day life to the fulfillment of the promises of God's kingdom. In the Church of England this season is called Kingdom Time It is, I think, a good name. In my mind it begins around the end of October with the feast of St Simon and St Jude (28th October) So far as we know they are two of the apostles listed in the Gospels but we know very little about them. Jude is traditionally called "The Obscure" meaning that whoever he is we don't actually have any detail.

[Indeed that's why Thomas Hardy reminds us in his dark novel of failed ambition and thwarted hope which is entitled Jude the Obscure(full text here) of a man who fails to make it because he is unknown, unrecognised, unappreciated...he is indeed Obscure]

This feast is a prelude to the great feast day that we encounter on November 1st....All Saints Day...and which is followed the day after by All Soul's Day, when the dead are commemorated We are here in a world which transcends the grave what the Apostle's Creed calls the communion of saints This is heady stuff! Too much for some! But we may be prompted to ask what this is all about Isn't it just religious mumbo-jumbo? Of course it could be, that may indeed be the point. If we get to the guts of it the saints point us to how faith might be lived with authenticity and integrity We are constantly tempted to whitewash the saints (like any heroes) and romanticise them. Indeed we do this to Jesus! But as we begin to scratch their stories we soon realise that their lives are anything but pristine. Let me just reflect briefly on three saints. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is arguably the most influential Christian thinker of the 21st century. His call to radical discipleship and to see the gospel as the challenge to freely decide to follow Christ in every aspect of life is now almost taken for granted. It does not seem too radical, and yet for Bonhoeffer his life was lived with a total commitment to community, to prayer and to human action. This latter ultimatley saw him caught up in the anti-Nazi resistance movement in Germany, he laid his life on the line by being one of those who sought to assassinate Hitler. This cost him his life, he was arrested and ultimately imprisoned. Executed only weeks before the war ended we see in his life the Cost of Discipleship ( a title of one of his books) played out in reality in his own life. Such a saint sets us before us the reality of Christian life, of the possibility of being faithful in life to all that Christ sets before us. Mother Teresa too, that amazing little Eastern European nun who ended up in India looking after the poorest of the poor she did it because she felt called to do Something Beautiful for God (a book about her made popular by Malcolm Muggeridge in the 70s) She too set before the world the possibility of being faithful not just in word but in deed. Francis catches the popular imagination for the same reason Although an incurable idealist, he was a fundamental pragmatist selling everything he worked to care for poor people and those who no one else loved He witnesses to the fact that it is possible to be faithful to Christ in life, in word and in deed

THIS WEEK Do you hear the call of the saints? The reality of the call to be faithful. How is God calling you to practise your sainthood in your life? What one thing can you do to be a saint this week...it will be loving, it will be faithful, it will be possible. So do it!