Mini Sermon #3

New Mini Sermon #3
All Saints’ Day

This month’s mini-sermon is not scriptural.  Instead, I’d like to mark one of Christianity’s holidays that often passes with little or no recognition—All Saints’ Day.  All Saints’ Day, also called All Hallows’ Day (“hallow” meaning “holy”) or Hallowmas, falls on November 1^st.

(If All Hallows’ Day sounds almost familiar, that’s because the evening before, also of religious significance in Christianity is All Hallows’ Eve, popularly called Halloween and celebrated on October 31^st.)

All Saints’ Day is a day when we celebrate all saints—all those who go to heaven—both past and present and known and unknown.  In Congregationalism, you don’t need to be recognized by the pope or the Catholic Church (or indeed have an official Saint’s Day) to be a saint—only God needs to know and recognize you.

You may be unaware of your sainthood yourself.  In fact, most of us Christians hope we will go to heaven, that we will be considered the “faithful deceased,” but there’s no actual way for us, as mere humans, to know. Only God knows that, so any one of us could be a living saint.

On All Saints’ Day, the bond between the Church triumphant (i.e. heaven) and the Church militant (the living church here on earth) is recognized.  Saints are both living and dead; anyone can be a saint.  In fact, the hymn “I Sing A Song of the Saints of God” speaks to how you can meet a saint anywhere, at school, at tea, on a train or even at sea.

But how did All Saints’ Day begin?  In the early church, people began to solemnize death dates of martyrs.  In the 4^th century, parishes started to venerate specific saints whose relics they possessed.  A relic could be anything from a holy person’s body buried at the church to a piece of fabric from their robe or even something as small as a finger bone.

Pope Gregory III (AD 731-741) placed All Saints’ Day in the official Christian calendar on November 1^st, with an alternate feast-day of May 15^th.

It’s not a coincidence that All Hallows’ Eve falls on the Celtic holiday of Samhain (in Ireland, celebrated on April 20^th instead of October 31^st)—the church would often appropriate similar holidays from conquered pagan peoples to make the conversion process easier.  A Celt, in this case, would traditionally celebrate the thinning of the veil between worlds on Samhain—and could transfer the recognition of that holy day to the new All Saints’ Day which recognized those Christians in heaven (or “beyond the veil”).

All Saints’ Day was retained during the Reformation and, as such, is celebrated not only by Catholics but also by Protestants.  In America, Halloween and the recognition of the dead (such as “ghosts”) transformed into the modern holiday we now see with pumpkin jack-o-lanterns and children dressing up as witches and ghosts and mummies for candy.

But it is more than that.  Let us not forget those who came before and those who will come after—the saints of yesterday and tomorrow.  One day we will hopefully be counted among them. Amen.

Yours Faithfully,
Reverend Averill Elizabeth Blackburn

Archdeacon’s Corner

“I Sing a Song of the Saints of God” is a hymn written by pastor’s wife Lesbia Scott and published in 1929.  It commemorates not only the current saints walking among us, but saints such as Luke, the “beloved physician;” Margaret, Queen of Scotland; Joan of Arc; Martin of Tours; John Donne (the poet); and Ignatius of Antioch.