ALL SAINTS

SOLEMNITY OF ALL SAINTS 2007.
Br. Barry Community Sermon

The word bridge does not occur in the Bible, at least not in the King James version nor, as far as I can make out, in the Jerusalem Bible. No doubt this is a reflection of the undeveloped state of technology in the Israel of biblical times compared to the civilizations that surrounded it.

Still, it is surprising that Divine Providence should omit such a basic religious symbol from the source book of Christianity. The bridge as a symbol is widespread in the religions of the world. Just one example, no self-respecting Zen Buddhist meditation garden is without its bridge. Divine Providence would wait for thirteen hundred years after the time of Christ’s life on earth before bringing the symbol of the bridge into the Church’s spiritual treasury. Surprisingly, perhaps, it would make use of a woman to do so. Less surprisingly, a woman from the land of those master bridge builders – the Romans.

St. Catherine of Siena, in the book which she dictated shortly before her death, uses the allegory of the bridge to stand for Christ. Christ the Bridge re-unites heaven and earth. But from where did St. Catherine get the inspiration for so powerful an idea. Was it the bridge in the city of Florence over the River Arno which she lived close by to for some time, a bridge already centuries old in her day ?

Or was it the even more famous bridge at Avignon with its twenty two arches ? St. Catherine visited the Pope in Avignon the year before she began composing her book. All this goes to show simply that the saints are products of their time and place, the society in which they live, the culture they grow up in. Someone has written ‘ Christ does not substitute himself for the personal life of his saint, a saint’s personal characteristics are not overlaid, smudged out or distorted by his sanctity’. These personal characteristics will to a large extent be shaped by cultural background.

St. Catherine’s countryman St.Philip Neri is known for his joy. Yet even this joy was learned. One of his biographers describes the Florence St.Philip grew up in as ‘ a joyous culture which had spread from the aristocrats to the most humble citizen’ and the most popular preacher in Florence when St. Philip was a boy, by name of Arlotto, was famous for his buffoonery. St. Philip himself tells us that this man had a great influence on him.

Or take St.Therese of Lisieux of whom Thomas Merton said, no doubt with tongue in cheek, that the greatest wonder of her life was that God could raise up a saint out of a nineteenth century, French, petite-bourgeois, provincial town. Be that as it may, St. Therese would surely never have come to sanctity if she had tried to be anything other than a child of that particular background.
The fact of the matter is that she learned the deep faith that was the basis of her sanctity from her mother.

Of course, the feast of All Saints is principally about the countless unknown saints whose names do not appear in the various calendars. Many of them would be unknown not just because those in the society around them might not be too interested in virtue and goodness and not just because their faults and weaknesses may have hid their sanctity from others but also because they would have shared much of the general attitude of their own time. For instance, how many holy men and women of the past accepted unquestioningly the institution of slavery. Pope John Paul the Second once said ‘even the experiences of great saints are not free of the limitations which always accompany the human reception of God’s voice’. The unknown saints too are children of their time.

Today’s feast can hardly be separated from tomorrow’s commemoration of All Souls nor indeed from the whole month of November, the month of the dead. Both liturgies point towards heaven, specifically as the goal of human life. There is no simpler natural symbol of heaven than that of light shining in darkness. It is the primordial religious symbol of the human race. So it is most appropriate that remembering the dead should often be associated with the lighting of candles, although not in this community. All Saints has its candles as well. It is true that this is only the usual Lauds and Vespers candles of a solemnity but this is the first Solemnity since the summer on which it is dark at Vespers time. The winter darkness closes in and the human spirit instinctively looks around for the perpetual light.

A line from today’s Mass instructs us that ‘today we rejoice in the saints of every time and place’. In doing so we thereby give some sort of credit to the multitude of societies and cultures that were the cradle of their humanity. This is one of the ways that the following declaration in the Second Vatican Council’s ‘Gaudium et Spes’ is realised: ‘the Christian community feels itself closely linked with the human race and its history’.

In summary, the saints are products of their time and place. The saints are human. The feast of All Saints directs us towards heaven.