A Reflection for the Feast of All Saints
Readings: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14 1 John 3:1-3 Matthew 5:1-12a
We are saying, “wait and see.” It’s a standard expression, but today we want not do much of it. Unlike our ancestors, we will readily activate a crucial light and look. For probably the most part, we only use the expression “wait and see” as a way of telling one other to be patient.
Emily Dickinson wrote a small poem about what it means to be a saint, though she doesn’t use the word. She likens everlasting life to the longed-for light of day when she will be able to finally be seen for who she truly is. In the identical dawn, shadows give solution to substance.
Finally to be identified!
Finally, the lamps upon thy side,
The remaining of life to see!
Past midnight, past the morning star!
Past sunrise! Ah! what leagues there are
Between our feet and day!
The Solemnity of All of the Saints reveals the connection between who we’re and who we should always turn into, between time and eternity, between ourselves and the saints. It teaches us, within the words of William Blake, that “eternity is in love with the productions of time.”
Consider time as a coming and going. All the things passes. People enter our lives, after which they’re gone. The identical is true of us: We got here, and we are going to go.
There are great religious traditions that disdain all that passes in favor of what might best be called “the Absolute,” a term for what stands beneath and beyond anything wrought in time.
The Solemnity of All of the Saints reveals the connection between who we’re and who we should always turn into, between time and eternity, between ourselves and the saints.
Absolutely the is just not an individual, and subsequently not our understanding of God. On this line of thought, personhood, since it is created in time, is ephemeral. You might think your struggles matter, but you, they usually, will soon enough pass back right into a primordial unity from which all the pieces got here.
Emily Dickinson’s poem has an utterly different understanding of eternity. “Finally to be identified.” She emerges into the dawn that follows death as an individual, one who can now be seen for who she is and one who finally sees the world for what it’s. “Finally, the lamps upon thy side, / The remaining of life to see!”
That is the Christian understanding of eternity, one forged within the resurrection of Christ. Our faith doesn’t disparage all that comes into and out of time. Jesus emerges from the darkness of death because the person he was, though he’s seen in his glory, which is one other way of claiming that he, just like the poet, is revealed within the fullness of who he truly is.
The risen Christ doesn’t reintegrate himself into the world. That is just not the meaning of the post-resurrection experiences. No, in them the disciples discover that their world can only be read, can only be comprehended, in the sunshine of who Christ is, in the truth of his resurrection.
To have fun a saint, those acknowledged by the church universal and people known only to us, is to have fun someone who has entered the dawn, to not turn into less of an individual, but to be the person she was all the time becoming, all the time meant to be. In eternity, people, places and events coalesce right into a final pattern, an entire person, a Gospel beatitude personified. They don’t melt into an absolute. No, what they became in time becomes absolute.
Beloved, we’re God’s children now;
what we will be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it’s revealed we will be like him,
for we will see him as he’s (1 Jn 3:2).
To be an individual is to face in relationship. Heaven, greater than the rest, is a relationship. It’s the place where loves are sealed, made full and everlasting, glorified. Heaven’s saints shall be “the lamps upon thy side.” They mutually reveal each to the opposite.
After this I had a vision of an incredible multitude,
which nobody could count,
from every nation, race, people, and tongue (Rev 7:9).
We are going to remain—indeed only fully turn into—individuals in heaven because we are going to love God in glory, in fullness. Every saint forges an identity on earth that doesn’t pass away. It becomes complete and glorified in the brand new world where God, who never got here and went, now lives in love with those that once did, who walked long within the darkness to be who they’re in the sunshine.
Past midnight, past the morning star!
Past sunrise! Ah! what leagues there are
Between our feet and day!
