November 1, 2022 – All Saint’s Day

So on this All Saints Sunday, it is appropriate to ask the question what is a Saint?  I can give you a brief synopsis of how saints have been defined over the last two thousand years. In the first three hundred years of the early church, a saint was someone killed for the sake of Christ. They were the martyrs of the church, burned at the stake, tortured to death in gruesome ways. To qualify for sainthood in the first three hundred years of the church, you had to be killed for the sake of Jesus Christ. 

Then, around the time of Emperor Constantine circa 317 CE, in the famous Edict of Milan, the Emperor legalized Christianity in part to bring together his empire. Now, the Roman Catholic Church began to canonize Saints.  A chapel would be built to honor a saint and people also began to pray to the saints to intercede to God on their behalf.  Praying to a saint who could intercede to God on your behalf became an important aspect of the Medieval Catholic Church, for some 1200 years – at least until the time of the Reformation.  Martin Luther and other reformers did not like the idea of praying to and through the saints.  They liked to believe that we could pray directly to God, and in the process of changing their thinking, the idea of what the meaning of a saint was changed as well.  A saint then began to refer to one of our Christian loved ones who had died and gone on before us.  Saints now began to refer to our loved family members who preceded us in death – mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters.  Today, we list saints as those within our church family as well as our personal family who have died – and we remember them on this All Saints Sunday. 

So, I ask again, what is a saint?  Some might still say that a saint is someone who lives with and puts up with an unbearable person.  Some people would say that my wife is a saint to live with and put up with me.  There is one thing about this definition of saint that is true – that saints do not have to be dead people – but can be living people who inspire us – people through whom the light of God shines and inspire us to be better people.

When we pray the Apostles’ Creed, we say, “I believe in…the communion of saints.” The communion of saints is made up of men and women who have placed their hope in Jesus Christ and through Baptism, are his adopted sons and daughters. The communion of saints includes the living and the deceased, whether they are with G-d in heaven or continuing to live their lives of faith in this world. You see, when we remember our loved ones who have passed on from this world, not only do they live on in our collective memories, but their faithfulness, their perseverance, and their courage continue to assist us in our efforts to remain faithful to the Christian life.

My friends as we join ourselves to the slow, chugging train that is the end of our church year, and of course the end of 2022, I pray you will remember often the lives of your family and friends who lived lives worthy of the “communion of Saints”. Let them be for you the inspiration you need to continue to live the Christ-like life.

Let us pray,

Lord Jesus, thank you for the example of the Saints. Please help me follow their footsteps, and yours O Christ. Help me to conform myself to Your image, seeking Your will in all things, as the Saints did. Amen.

Pastor Dave