A Communion of Saints

There was a time in life when I was young, naïve, and not a tad stupid. I could see no point in the remembering of saints or the celebration of a saint’s day. Part of that may have had root in my introversion, and the fact that, resultant of that disposition, I had no functional community about me. When I moved from the Roman church to the Anglican I had something of the zeal of the reformers. I looked upon the cult of saints with not a little suspicion. I still retain a caution for I think it easy for some to slip ever so comfortably into a frame of mind wherein devotedness to a saint or the saints in general can lead into shielding our Lord and Saviour from his immediacy to the soul. It is that subliminal attitudinal shift, and not devotedness to the saints themselves, that is contrary to both gospel and faith.

We remember the saints because we are members with them of the singular congregation that is the church which spans the centuries from those first friends and disciples to the friends and disciples of Christ that fill the seats about us today. We are a community. It is our obligation to be a community. It does not matter that we are not all of one type or disposition. In the reredos of the parish to which I belong there are depicted a number of saints. They are a diverse group—warrior, scholar, mystic, ascetic, prophet, preacher, executive, skeptic. Each of them had their dominant sides. Some were seemingly stern and commanding. Some were seen to be gentle and kind. But they were not “types” anymore than any one of us is simply a “type.” They were human: multifaceted, complex, fallible, frangible. Correction! They are human because death does not erase our humanity.

The saints of that reredos stand on their pedestals and rise in layers above the high altar. In the Lady chapel the statue of Mary stands upon a plinth that raises her far above anyone’s head, and as her face is turned upwards she becomes all the more transcending. If the saints are our fellow congregants why do we put them upon pedestals? Yes, most of them we know because their devotion to Christ and church have caused us to look up to them as exemplars of faith. But they are not, as it were, in some space above us. In the narthex a statue of Christ towers above those who enter. Yet, he is the one in whom God has elected to be the fullness of our humanity, and to be is our midst. Here we are faced with the limitations of art. A picture, or a pedestal, may be able to say a thousand words, but there are times when more than a thousand are needed. Creating a sacred space is an art. However, once the work of art has been created it becomes to a certain degree something concrete. Therein it potentially becomes as delimiting of the whole truth as doctrine when it becomes doctrinaire. The depiction of any reality can never be confined to one point of view. This is particularly true when the matter is the spirituality that is the heart and soul of reality. The creeds and great doctrines are terse outlines we need to stay within, but within those boundaries there is almost endless room for the reflection of layering, shapes, shades, contours and colours. Were this not the case all theologizing would have ended with the letters of Paul, and structures for worship and celebratory rites would never have evolved. Putting Christ and his saints “up there” because he is our Lord and they our exemplars is a valid move. But we cannot leave them there in isolation from the fact that they are in their very holiness “humbled,” literally down to earth, and so with us. If Christ is with us until the end of time, if Christ as Emmanuel is God-with-us, then so too are the saints whose lives are hidden in his.

There is that wonder-stirring verse from the Epistle to the Hebrews that we so often use to begin prayers on the feasts of saints: “Seeing that we are encompassed by so great a cloud of witnesses…” We are wrapped in the company of the saints. Whensoever we pray we are at one with the saints who are in ceaseless and devoted care for the world and the church, in worship evermore con-forming themselves to Christ, in adoration evermore falling into the love that is God. There is no solitary prayer or moment of devotion. One Spirit speaks through all prayer. One Spirit binds all that pray, binds all them that turn, even in silence, towards that ineffable power that upholds all creation. We are never alone. We are the Body of Christ, a community of many parts, many roles, many facets, many centuries moving through time and space, but ever and forever one being.

Without this holy community Holy Communion becomes but a ceremony. The sacrament exists to make a real and relatable community. That does not mean everyone needs to be on intimate terms with everyone else. But we each and all need to be open towards one another, care for and about one another. In the doctrine of the Trinity the Father and Son know and care for one another such that they breathe out the dynamic of love that is the Spirit. It is a community of persons bounded in living knowing and devotion. If the church is to be something more than an institution it requires that same dynamic. It needs to reflect that divine dynamic. Only when communion and community combine, only when Holy Communion is allowed to create a holy, as holistic, community does there appear that dynamic that makes church a visible, vivid, and vivifying presence of God in the world.

The parish is the cell in which that dynamic, that spirit, that Holy Spirit is meant to take root and manifest. It is the time and space in which that cosmic sweep of God’s devotion to his creation has the human scope and scale to become sanctified humanity constantly coalescing and adapting to the outpouring of his grace, his presence in the world for the world. In this endeavour, this mission, we were joined not only one to another but to that singular sweep of disciples gone before us in ceaseless devotion to God and his work.

In my parish church we gather in the choir everyday for morning and evening prayers. Often there are only a few occupying those seats. Most of us know each other at least by name. Most of know at least by name the saints upon the reredos or the saint whose feast we might be keeping. And we ought to do better at that because we are a company, a companionship rich in history, rich in salvation’s history. We rightly remember the needs and cares of one another in our daily prayers because we care for and about one another. We rightly ask the prayers of the saints because they are our companions, our fellow congregants, our friends more certain perhaps than any on this shore. We rightly give thanks for them because by the light they have manifested we are helped along our way. We rightly honour the saints of history because we are called to be saints with them in eternity.

I am given to ponder what this world might be were every Christian soul to keep in mind that we are surrounded by saints ever there to aid us in our journey, ever in the presence of Jesus Christ reaching out his hand to heal us and guide us.