All Saints’ Day, Matthew 5:1-12

Delivered by Pastor Jonathan Linman, November 1, 2023

We normally celebrate All Saints on the Sunday closest to November 1. But this year, we decided to mark the day itself, and then also to celebrate Day of the Dead (dia de los Muertos) tomorrow on November 2. (Tomorrow’s celebration is also known as All Souls’ Day or Commemoration of the Faithful Departed).

So, given our focus this year, I want to claim with you a teaching moment about the origins of All Saints’ Day. How this festival day came to be is difficult exactly to trace. An ancient Christian hymn commemorating martyrs dates from the mid-4th century. A sermon by John Chrysostom, also one of the early Christian greats, mentions the commemoration of martyrs. By the 7th Century, non-martyrs were included. This evidence suggests celebration of the martyrs and saints early in the church’s life.

The clearest feature of history is that in the year 610, Pope Boniface IV reclaimed the pagan Roman Pantheon (a temple focused on all the Roman gods) and repurposed it as a church dedicated to Mary and all the martyrs, and the anniversary of this dedication continued through the years with much devotion. This observance occurred at a similar time to a pagan festival to placate the gods, and this proximity in timing was perhaps an attempt to Christianize the pagan festival.

By the 8th or 9th century, November 1 became All Saints’ Day. Think of the weather in Europe in this season. Late autumn mists and frosts are evocative of visitation of spirits, and by extension, the saints. 

The emphasis of All Saints’ Day is really on the communion of saints, the great crowd of witnesses, and not particular, individual saints who generally have their own days of commemoration.

All Souls Day, Day of the Dead, or Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, the festival tomorrow, is really the time to remember the particular individuals who have gone before us among our family and church members and friends.

Generally, our celebrations, especially when they take place on Sundays, tend to blend both themes of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days.

But dedicating ourselves to the particular historical focus of All Saints’ Day gives us the chance to see the big picture, the big crowd of saints. Thus, today’s festival calls to mind the vast communion of saints of all times and places and nations and ethnicities and denominations, beyond time and space, and beyond death.

The passage we heard from the Book of Revelation captures well this sense of a great crowd. Listen to it again: “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”

Moreover, the communion of saints includes those referred to in the Beatitudes, today’s gospel reading, who finally receive their reward in the heavenly realms: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted for the sake of righteousness, the reviled. Happy now are these blessed ones!

By praising saints, we praise God who triumphs through the saints, for each one has been claimed by Christ, redeemed by his blood. And what happened to them gives us hope for what is also promised to us, as suggested by the author of 1 John: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when Christ is revealed, we will be like Christ, for we will see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2) The great communion of saints knows this reality already. And we will know it, too, when we join them in their great assembly when we pass from this life.

So, when you come to the Communion table this evening, and when we conclude our liturgy with a procession to our columbarium where many of our own saints are laid to rest, I pray that you’ll have a palpable sense that we are not alone on our journey, that we’re not small in number in this place, but that we share even now sacramentally in the great Communion of Saints who are present with us, too, even as Christ makes himself known to us in the breaking of the bread.

And this great communion is not silent, but the saints cheer us on from beyond the grave. Thus, we take courage in other words of scripture: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…” (Hebrews 12:1-2a) Amen. God keep us ever in the company of all the saints. May we ever feel their presence, their prayers, their cheering us on. Again, I say, Amen.