The Rev. Johnathan Denson
5th November 2023: All Saints’ Sunday
“Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?”
It’s not entirely inconceivable that someone, walking into this church and knowing nothing about what we are doing here, might ask this same question, heard just a few moments ago in our first reading for the Book of Revelation: “Who are these, robed and white, and where have they come from?”
And to such a person, asking such an innocent question, I suppose a valid answer could be: “Well, they are Father Francisco, Father Johnathan, Caterina, Madeline, and Virginia; they are the priests and the acolytes and, well, they came from the sacristy.”
The language of the Church’s liturgy is so often the language of symbols (what other kind of language is there?).
And its colors are no exception.
In the cycle of the liturgical year, we are in the midst of this long season “after Pentecost,” also called “ordinary time.”
It is, in many ways, the Church’s season of “real,” “normal” life — and, fittingly, its appointed color is green.
But today we’re wearing white.
Today we interrupt “our regular programming” to celebrate the feast of All Saints, transferred from 1 November, which, this year, fell on a Wednesday.
All Saints.
But who are these? (To ask the question again.)
They are that “great multitude, that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” in the heavenly vision of our first reading.
They are the ones we celebrate today, on this All Saints’ Sunday, here in Rome.
Saints and Rome, if you haven’t noticed, historically pair well together.
Even if we only have one of the four heads of John the Baptist, this Eternal City of ours is a place where one cannot escape the remembrance of the saints: whether Paul, Peter, Laurence, Cecilia, Catherine of Sienna, Sebastian, Agnes, or any of the many others whose remains are here, with churches and statues built in their honor, with fame that encircles the world.
But today is for every saint, for every soul who has died and gone into the eternal love of God.
All of them.
And, therefore, not just those celebrated by name in the Church’s cycle of feasts throughout the year, but also the silent ones — especially the silent ones — who, unknown to the world, are remembered only by us, only by me, by you[1].
Today is the feast of your saints, of my saints, of our beloved, holy dead who live with God.
And, if I’m being honest, saints like Helga Asum — whom I’m sure you’ve never heard of — have a lot more to do with me and how I’m living my life as a Christian on earth than someone like, for example, Saint Sebastian — whom I’m guessing you have heard of and seen depicted in works of art spanning centuries.
All of us have these unheard-of saints to remember on this day: for if you have met faith, hope, love, kindness, pardon, courage, fidelity, in persons who now are gone from this earthly life, then you know those whom your heart may seek in the presence of God, even as we still feel the pain of their absence here; you know those whom we celebrate on this “double feast,” if you will, of All Saints and All Souls, in which sorrow and joy, grief and happiness are strangely blended[2].
It is perhaps for that reason — this strange mix of contrasting experiences — that the Church appoints the Beatitudes (blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who are persecuted, so on and so forth) for the gospel reading on this day.
A quick sidenote: if you know a language other than English, it’s worth reading the Beatitudes in one of those languages.
The reason I suggest this is because, in the highly-hybridized, endlessly-evolving mut of a language otherwise known as English, “blessed” is an incredibly slippery concept.
“Why is that?” you might wonder.
Well, I was hoping you’d ask!
Thanks to shifting vowel sounds (cioè, uno spostamento dei suoni delle vocali) in Old English about 1,000 years ago, the word “bless” — while keeping its original meaning (having something to do with “making sacred”) — came to assume the additional meaning of the etymologically-unrelated “bliss” — which is about being happy, joyful, or fortunate.
Bliss: the meaning of which is perhaps closer to the Italian «beati quelli che» and the German „selig sind die“ of the Beatitudes, and certainly closer to the original Greek “μακάριοι οἱ”.
But, these days, in contemporary English, it’s kind of confusing because “blessed” can mean both «beato» and «benedetto» in Italian, or, in German, both „selig“ and „gesegnet“.
That’s worth pointing out just so it’s clear how absurd the Beatitudes really are, just how self-contradicting they sound!
“Happy” or “fortunate” or “blissful” are the poor; “happy” or “fortunate” or “blissful” are those who mourn; “happy” or “fortunate” or “blissful” are those who are persecuted!
Jesus seems to have a funny idea of “bliss.”
(Or does he?)
“Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?”
It’s safe to presume that the Church understands these famous Beatitudes to be descriptions of the saints, who are in perfect joy, perfect bliss.
The other day, I came across an interesting little article by the British-American modernist poet W.H. Auden, entitled Christianity and Art.
In it, he offers an observation quite apropos of the seeming self-contradiction of the Beatitudes in the context of All Saints’:
To the imagination [formed by the ideals of classic antiquity], the sacred is self-evident. […] Similarly, to the imagination, the godlike or heroic man is self-evident. He does extraordinary deeds that the ordinary man cannot do, or extraordinary things happen to him. […] But Christ appears looking of just like any other man, yet claims that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life […]. The contradiction between the profane appearance and the sacred assertion is impassible to the imagination. […] To a Christian, the godlike man is not the hero who does extraordinary deeds, but the holy man, the saint, who does good deeds […] in secret, hidden”[3].
The holy one, the saint, has followed this Christ, has — as the Book of Revelation later says of the saints — followed the Lamb wherever he goes”[4].
Indeed, in Revelation’s vision, what whitens the robes of the saints?
The blood of the Lamb!
The outpouring of life, the self-outpouring of the one whose name is Love[5].
“Who are these, robed in white?”
They are those who have loved.
They are those who — even while poor in spirit, mourning, meek, hungering for (because deprived of) righteousness, remaining pure and showing mercy, making peace, persecuted and reviled falsely — have still loved.
They are those who loved anyway.
This is holiness.
This is sanctity.
This is what we celebrate today.
Yes, Auden is right that Christ’s way — Christ, the God who gave his life for those who crucified him — is in tension with how the world tends to imagine greatness.
Christ’s way, the way we proclaim, the way the saints have run before us, is to love anyway.
Perhaps it’s this that makes Auden write his poem “The More Loving One”(which, by the way, is very much worth reading on a Sunday afternoon)[6].
Love means choosing to pour yourself out.
And so, yes, we cannot escape the truth — the hard truth — of the Beatitudes: it is love that breaks us.
But, it is, paradoxically, love that makes us whole.
It is love that unites us. It is love that sanctifies us.
It is love that saves us. It is the only way — the only truth, the only life.
The Scriptures tell us:
Love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of one’s house,
it would be utterly scorned”[7].
Love really can be eternal.
And, like every Christian feast, this feast of All Saints is a feast of love.
“Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?”
These are our saints — my saints, your saints, our holy souls — whom we both mourn and celebrate on this double-sided feast of All Saints and Souls.
They are those who loved anyway… and who love still… whose love has become eternal.
“Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?”
These are they who have washed themselves in the outpouring of their lives, in the self-outpouring that is Love.
These are our saints, and they come from right here!
Saints of God, come to our aid; our beloved and holy dead, love us and teach us still; you who live forever, accompany us who are dying along this pilgrimage to eternity.
Amen.
[1] Cf. Rahner, K., „Allerheiligen,“ Kleines Kirchenjahr, in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 7 Der betende Christ, ed. A.R. Batlogg, Verlag Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau, 2013, 185-189.
[2] Cf. Rahner, K., „Allerheiligen“.
[3] Auden, W.H., Christianity and Art, in The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays, Random House, New York, 1962. Emphasis added.
[4] Revelation 14:4.
[5] Cf. George Herbert’s poem “Love (III)” (“Love bade me welcome”).
[6] One thinks, in particular, of the lines “If equal affection cannot be, / Let the more loving one be me.”
[7] Song of Songs 8:6-7.