All Saints' Day


As for us, we have this large crowd of witnesses around us.
So then, let us rid ourselves of everything that gets in the way,
and of the sin which holds on to us so tightly,
and let us run with determination the race that lies before us.
Hebrews 12:1 GNB


November 1st is the day set aside to commemorate all the saints and martyrs of our faith-known and unknown such as those martyred as a group. Altho it has been commemorated much longer, the day was made official by Pope Gregory IV in 837 A.D.

Before you freak out on me and scream something awful about papists, well, let's look at who are the saints. When we profess to follow Christ and are baptized into His death and raised into His life, we become part of the Communion of Saints. We are the saints to whom the Epistles are addressed. A saint is merely a person who earnestly tries to live out the Gospel and rely on Christ for their needs. Besides all these ideas were WAAAAYYYYY before the Reformation so just sit with it for a while.

“After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.... [One of the elders] said to me, ‘These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’” Revelation 7:9,14

On this day, I am reminded, and comforted, by that great cloud of witnesses. I am not alone in my struggle against sin, in my journey to becoming more like Christ, in my thirst for God. There are many, inhabiting this planet now and those who have already found their way Home, that have walked this path. I can read about them and find hope and courage. As brothers and sisters, we pray for one another. Geez, I chose to quit smoking on this day a couple years ago because altho I wanted to stop, felt convicted to quit (a little Christianese), had tried for years but could not, I decided a little extra help from the million (or however many) saints there might be couldn't hurt.

I still haven't smoked. Not only is my God watching. So are my brothers and sisters.


We celebrate today the solemnity of All Saints.
This invites us to turn our gaze to the immense multitude of
those who have already reached the blessed land,
and points us on the path that will lead us to that destination.
Pope John Paul II, All Saints' Day 2003

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christ in His Distressing Disguise

Image
When I was much younger, I learned about this remarkable woman, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, then simply known as Mother Teresa. As a teenager herself, she had chosen to serve God by leaving her home in the former Yugoslavia to go practically around the world to India and become a nun. There she taught school, but she was distracted by the poor on the streets. Longing to care for them, she needed to be released from her teaching duties. Eventually a new religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, was formed by Mother Teresa to serve them, the poorest of the poor. I wonder today what attracted me to her. I didn't know much about India. The pictures of the suffering, the cachetic bodies that barely resembled humans, puzzled me. Growing up with movies and air brushed photographs, as well as a skepticism of news and government organizations, it can be hard to believe. How can there be such incredible suffering in my world? Mother Teresa was doing God's work; I know that was exciti
Read more

Blog Carnival-Seasons

Image
It was all so much simpler in my spring.  I suppose it is for everyone.  That is why babies and puppies and newness are squealed over.  I have been struggling.  Spring has long gone.  The leaves are falling. I loved what I had, what once defined me. Without it now, I feel like a crab without a shell-              vulnerable...                            homeless...                                           dry in spirit. I know, that all is not lost. I know, things change. I know, that God,              who brought me from there to there once,              will bring me from here to there again. I know, the story is not over. I know, the season will change, again. I wish my heart knew all this as well. Check out more blog entries on Seasons at the Carnival .
Read more

Blog Carnival: Community

Image
Blog Carnival: Community Community is getting to be a buzzword that hardly seems recognizable.  It has become permanently connected with a metrosexual worship leader at the hip church which has an outreach into some impoverished place.  But is that community? Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's social networking site.  Did you know that there are more than 300 million active users and that 50% of their active users (returned to the site in the last 30 days) log on to Facebook in any given day and that the average user has 130 friends on the site? Is that community? Do we really have a community or do we talk so much about it and request friends by the busload because we desire it intensely? We were made for community.  Creator said it was not good for that first man to be alone.  Even Creator was not alone.  We need to walk with others.  We need our village.  We need them to not only walk with us and love us and share our burdens, but to challenge us, to force us to grow.
Read more