SAINTS AND SINNERS

 

SAINTS AND SINNERS

Cambridge historian Eamon Duffy has written a marvellous book on the history of the popes called Saints and Sinners. It touches the lives of significant figures among the 263 ‘servants of the servants of God’ in the past two thousand years. All were sinners. Some were saints.

This week we celebrate All Saints, the commemoration of all the sinners who became saints and enjoy the fullness of life with God. We also tack on All Souls, the remembrance of all those who, in a way unknown to us, are still on the journey and we pray for them.

In the Mass for All Souls we read, ‘what proves God’s love for us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners’. To be human is to be a sinner. In a way that the Church strives to explain since the day the Book of Genesis was written, the human family appeared on the planet incomplete, unfulfilled, and the word chosen to describe this was ‘sinful’.

Yet, like every plant and animal, a human being spends its life groping, searching, for fulfilment. Think of a street vendor in Harare or a famous comedian like Matthew Perry who has just died as a result of drugs. Whoever we are, we are – mostly – trying our best to make a go of things. We are on the move from being sinners to being saints.   

We are celebrating the feast of All Saints, a moment to rejoice with all those who have made it to the fulfilment of our home in the Blessed Kingdom. We remember the famous ones, Peter and Paul, Teresa and Catherine and all the ones we recall in the litany of the saints. We also remember all the great people, many we have known, who do not have St before their names.

And we are not just remembering them. We know that we are on the way following them and where they are is where Jesus told his disciples he wanted us to be too.  ‘Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am’ (John 17:24). That is where we are going. We have a little time here, a time of personal preparation but also of communal concern for others. The two are one as we saw in last Sunday’s gospel

All Saints is a feast of the gathering of the people of God in every place and time. We imagine ourselves in the presence of God and the whole gathering of heaven. It is a moment of consolation. But we cannot remain ‘standing there looking into the sky’ (Acts 1:11). We have work to do. We have less happy gatherings to sort out, like the people of Gaza crowded into a confine space without food, water or care, almost without hope.