Revelation 7:2-14 1 John 3:1-3 Matthew 5:1-48
Happy All Saints Day. The readings today, as well as our own life experiences, invite us to reflect on the Communion of Saints. The book of Revelation shows us a “vision of a great multitude, … standing before the throne … wearing white robes.” John’s first letter writes that “what we shall be has not yet been revealed [but] we shall be like God.” And the Gospel gives us the beatitudes, the descriptions of God’s blessed ones. What does our lived experience of saints show us? Are the saints up in the clouds? Down here with us on earth?
The October issue of “Interchange” carried on the front page article, “Rooted in the Beatitudes,” by Co-member Lillian Moskeland. My favorite part of it is the photo of Lillian’s husband, Co-member John Moskeland, in an apron behind a serving station at a homeless shelter. That’s the way I remember John, a quiet-spoken, generous man with lights in his eyes, a down-to-earth saintly man, one of so many in our Loretto communion of saints.
It is not so unusual these days to speak of the saints of our own time. But there are all those early grade-school learnings about saints that still linger and set us worrying about worthiness. So let’s just get some things out in the open:
* Saints aren’t just for Catholics. I was surprised to learn this when, as a teenager, I met Episcopal priest and Missouri Sen. John Danforth and heard him tell about his favorite saint, Francis of Assisi.
* Saints aren’t just from long ago, which I thought they were until I heard about Maria Goretti, who lived in the 20th century and “was made a saint” when I was in grade school and read about it in the Catholic comic book, “Treasure Chest.”
* Saints aren’t dead; one must be down-to-earth-alive to practice saintliness.
The Gospel for this All Saints Day makes it clear that saintliness is the work of the living. This morning’s passage is the opening of the Sermon on the Mount. At the beginning of the sermon, Jesus sets saintly practice before us in the form of the beatitudes. Each of the familiar eight beatitudes characterizes a modality of saintly practice: simplicity, empathy, gentleness, justice-loving, mercifulness, purity of heart, peacemaking, patient endurance. From these Jesus goes on in the sermon to describe many more varieties of saintly practice.
Jesus speaks particularly about the highest form of saintly practice, love of neighbor. “You have heard it said, love your neighbor but hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. This will prove that you are children of God. For God makes the sun to rise on the bad and the good alike.” Following this passage, Jesus touches on one of the most difficult realities about saintly practice: the difference between doing and being.
* Saints are not flawlessly perfect; in their living state, saintly people are works in progress. It is rumored that some of the saintly are not even easy to live with.
Saintly practice is not about perfect performance, nor goal achievement, not about pleasing others or even pleasing God. Saintliness is about alignment; it is about growing in family resemblance to the one who made us. So in the Sermon on the Mount, after the beatitudes and many other descriptions of saintliness, Jesus speaks particularly of the saintly practice of love of neighbor, which he sums up, paradoxically, by saying, “You are to be perfect, in the way that your heavenly father is perfect.” You are to love perfectly, in the manner in which your heavenly Father loves: Be merciful in your love and generous; reach beyond yourself in your love. Include everyone in your love, both friend and foe, just as God, who sends the sun to rise and the rain to fall on everyone, loves everyone.
