I love All Saints’ Day. It’s probably my favorite church holiday. I know, as a priest, I should be saying that Easter or Christmas are my favorite, but it’s my favorite because it’s a time when we remember and rejoice in the Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven. It’s a time when we re-member our community.
In the past, I’ve shared with you about the difference in the two kinds of saints. There are the capital letter “S” saints…the ones that have been canonized and honored by the church for centuries. The lower letter “s” saints are the ones who have made contributions to the community and to our faith tradition. At the Wednesday Eucharist, we celebrate a different saint each week and in previous Bible Study meetings we’ve read about the lives of various women saints.
I thought this morning we’d spend a little time learning about some of these saints.
From the book This Saint’s For You! we learn about the patron saint of scientists--St. Albert who lived during the 13th century:
Albert is best known as the man who taught theology to Thomas Aquinas, but he was also a scientist. He wrote forty books on the natural sciences. When it comes to scientific investigation, he believed in seeing how things worked first hand; “The aim of natural science is not simply to accept the statements of others”. Albert published a book on zoology based on direct observation. He was the first person to accurately describe a Greenland whale.
From the book Holy Women, Holy Men, we learn about Samuel Crowther, the first African bishop in Nigeria:
He helped to translate the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer into Yoruba and other West African languages. He established schools and training facilities, he encouraged the study of the Gospel and taught farming methods that allowed students to raise basic crops and cotton as a source of income. Bp. Crowther was the most widely known African Christian of the 19th century.
From the book Women Saints, we learn about Amelia Bloomer who was born in 1818:
Amelia spent her life working for the rights of women and blacks. She was instrumental in starting the first Episcopal Church in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and hosted many missionaries, including Jackson Kemper. Amelia published the first newspaper devoted to women’s issues, which was also the first paper in the country that a woman owned.
From the book All Saints, we learn about St. Jude, one of the 12 disciples :
While Jude is the most obscure of the disciples in the Gospels, he is the one most invoked in prayer. Jude is the supposed author of the shortest New Testament book, “The Letter of Jude” which is 25 verses long and warns early Christians against the dangers of false teachers. He is known as the “patron of hopeless causes”.
While the stories of these big “S” saints and little “s” saints are inspiring and hope-filled, they aren’t always the stories of our “everyday” saints. So who are the “everyday” saints? We are. As Robert Ellsberg explained, “No one is called to be another St Francis or St Teresa. But there is a path to holiness that lies within our individual circumstances, that engages our own talents and temperaments, that contends with our own strengths and weaknesses, that responds to the needs of our own neighbors and our particular moment in history” ( All Saints, 475-47).
Take a look around you…there are saints everywhere! Among us are people who feed the hungry, clothe the naked and give shelter to those without a warm, dry place. Among us are people who share a smile and a kind word in our most troubled times. If you look to your right and to your left, I would be willing to bet that these people have done something kind, courageous, loving, and life affirming. There are saints among us.
A Prayer Meditation for All Saints Dayby Safiyah Fosua
We give you thanks, O God, for all the saints who ever worshiped you
Whether in brush arbors or cathedrals,
Weathered wooden churches or crumbling cement meeting houses
Where your name was lifted and adored.
We give you thanks, O God, for hands lifted in praise:
Manicured hands and hands stained with grease or soil,
Strong hands and those gnarled with age
Holy hands
Used as wave offerings across the land.
We thank you, God, for hardworking saints;
Whether hard-hatted or steel-booted,
Head ragged or aproned,
Blue-collared or three-piece-suited
They left their mark on the earth for you, for us, for our children to come.
Thank you, God, for the tremendous sacrifices made by those who have gone before us.
Bless the memories of your saints, God.
May we learn how to walk wisely from their examples of faith, dedication, worship, and love.
http://www.gbod.org/resources/a-prayer-meditation-for-all-saints-day (United Methodist Church)