The Feast of All Saints

+     In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, One God. Amen.

A most joyous and most blessed Feast of All Saints today ya’ll!

Today we observe one of the 7 Principle Feasts of the church year, which are Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Christmas, Epiphany, and of course, All Saints. In other words - it’s very important! And, of course, I commend to you the extremely fascinating reading of The Calendar of the Church Year found on page 15 of the Book of Common Prayer.

The Feast of All Saints reminds us that we are all called to a life of holiness, to be saints: that we are all saints, truly by the grace of God, and that we are Saints-in-the-making.

It also reminds us that the Church we are a part of is so, so much bigger than anything we can conceive of in the humdrum, mundane, beautiful, challenging, stressful, joyous life that we are all given here on Earth!

Because today we are reminded that the Church we are a part of is bigger than St. Andrew’s, bigger than the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, bigger than the National Episcopal Church, bigger than the Anglican Communion, bigger than Christians here in this world, the global body of all believers.

That is to say - the Church we are a part of is not merely here on earth, but transcends the very boundaries of materiality: the Church we find ourselves a part of transcends time and space, transcends people and place, transcends the very things which so often divide each and everyone of us.

On the Feast of All Saints, we celebrate the transcendent, glorious, eternal, reality of the Church Triumphant.

On the Feast of All Saints, we celebrate because we are caught up in the Communion of Saints, that Great Cloud of Witnesses (Hebrews 12:1).

On the Feast of All Saints, we rejoice because we are called to be saints (1 Cor. 1:2), we are glad because we are “God’s beloved… who are called to be saints” (Romans 1:7).

Today is a true reminder that we who set our hopes on Christ are “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit” and that in Christ we come to know Him who saves us and sets us free from the chains of Sin, who unites us into one Body, that we may come to know the “riches of [Christ’s] glorious inheritance among the saints” as St. Paul writes today in his letter to the Church in Ephesus.

The Scriptures make clear that we are called to sainthood, and indeed are saints thanks to the grace of Christ.

But this day also recalls the Saints of time past. Lesser Feasts and Fasts reminds us that, “from very early times… the word “saint” came to be applied primarily to persons of heroic sanctity whose deeds were recalled with gratitude and admiration by later generations.”[1]

The remembrance of saints - people of particular holy living - began first with the martyrs. The early Christian faithful who, in the first few centuries of the Church, were killed for their faith generally by imperial edict. Early churches recalled the witness of the martyrs for their faith as they were executed in horrific ways. The word martyr just means witness or testimony in Greek.

Over time, with the rise of the monastic movements by the 400s, and with Christianity becoming a legally recognized faith in the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, more and more people were not dying - but living! And gradually, people of particular holy lifestyles were recognized and honored within the liturgical movements of the Church.

These holy people, these saints, are fellow humans who show us the ways of living how Christ calls us to live. These are the saints, the holy people, who inspire us, who point us not towards them - but Christ - and if they can do it, so can we! And it is these saints who now intercede for us on our behalf in the presence of God (Rev. 5:8, Rev. 8:3-4).

And since we are called to be saints, to be a holy people, it is fitting that the Gospel today recounts the grand summation of the Christian life - the beatitudes. Specifically, we are reading the Gospel of Luke’s 4 beatitudes from Jesus' sermon on the plain, which is a bit different from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew.

The beatitudes tell us something about the holy life we are called into. The structure of the beatitudes is fascinating in and of itself:

We have 4 blessed ones - the poor, the hungry, the grieving, and the despised.

We have 4 cursed ones - the rich, the full, the laughing, and the socially respected.

We catch a glimpse here of who it is in God’s kingdom who will be cared for - and it is those who suffer in life, who are socially destitute, who are the outcasts. We see here a mirror of the theme of the Widow, Orphan, and Alien in the Old Testament - the outcasts who God shows particular favor to.

And it is to these people - the outcast, the destitute, the oppressed, that God calls for us to minister to. The Church is called, as Christ’s hands and feet on this world, to bring of our abundance and offer it to the poor, food to the hungry, comfort to the grieving, and love to the despised.

That is the Church’s calling. That is our calling.

That is the blueprint of being a saint.

That is the spiritual calling of each and every one of us as we come to know our God in worship and adoration and praise and prayer and, yes, in action too - for faith without works is dead (James 2:26).

And then in the Gospel we are confronted with the most difficult part of sainthood. Loving our enemies. Jesus explicitly tells us to “do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you” and so forth.

And our Lord demands this of us because this is exactly what He does for us.

And let me be clear - we pray for those who curse and harm us not because we ought to roll over and permit ourselves to be abused. No.

We pray for them because we seek that they would turn from their ways, and repent, and be restored to God and to right relationship with fellow people.

We pray this so that no other people need suffer under their hands.

We pray and behave this way because it is how Jesus behaves.

And to behave like a Saint is to behave like Jesus.

And to do this takes time and prayer and grace which only God can give. And it takes discipline and intention and desire, which we can give.

To do this is to say that, “He must increase, and I must decrease” (John 3:30) as St. John the Baptist says (John 3:30).

To love our enemies as ourselves is, using that word from last week, a form of kenosis - a self-emptying - of our own selves and sense of vengeance and replacing it with the will of God.

In doing this we mirror the kenosis - the self-emptying - of Christ.

We are all saints, yes, by the grace of God.

And we are Saints in the making, people of particularly holy stature, because that is what Christ calls us towards.

And we look to the lives of the Saints and see that they aren’t so different from us: Imperfect people striving towards the One Who Is Perfect, the one who fills “All in All”

So my friends, let us rejoice on this principal feast - and the church says: AMEN!

Let us rejoice for the great cloud of witnesses, the Saints, who bear witness to the glory of God and intercede on our behalf!

And the church says: AMEN!

Let us rejoice that we too are caught up in that great cloud of witnesses, that we are saints in the making, striving to be more like our loving God!

And the church says: AMEN!

All power and glory and honor be to the Holy and Undivided Trinity, One God!

And the church says:

AMEN!

[1] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/lesser_feasts_and_fasts_-_2024__final_.pdf, p. 494.