| We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses |
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Sermon preached by Roberta Burke on All Saints, 4 November, 2007 Recently the letters of a famous person were published. One read: “When I try to raise my thoughts to heaven – there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. – I am told God loves me – and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.” “I want – and there is no one to answer – no One on Whom I can cling – no, No One. – Alone … Where is my Faith – even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness.”i These are not the words of an outspoken aetheist, but of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whom many revere as a modern saint. Over the years she wrote to her confessors describing her spiritual struggle. She had asked that these intensely personal letters be destroyed after her death. However, her letters have now been published as part of the investigation to determine if she should be canonised as a saint. This revelation that for some years Mother Teresa felt emptiness instead of God’s presence has surprised many of the faithful and delighted militant aetheists. Christopher Hitchens, a notorious nun basher, saw these letters as justifying his earlier attacks on Mother Teresa. He called her “a confused old lady who…for all practical purposes ceased to believe.”ii So, should Mother Theresa be made a saint? Today we’re celebrating the Feast of All Saints. What do we mean when we say someone is a saint? In the Apostles’ Creed we say we believe in “the communion of saints”. The word “saint” literally means “holy one”. In today’s Epistle, Paul commends the Ephesians’ “love toward all the saints”iii. By “saints”, he was refering to their fellow Christians, especially those working to spread the gospel. In another letter, Paul greeted “all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints.”iv God calls Christians to become saints, to become holy as He is holy.v By answering God’s call to become holy, Christians are joined to God in Christ. How did our present day idea of saints develop? For a full account, I refer you to Father Robert’s book, Celebrating the Saints, available from all good bookshops. Briefly, the concept of saints grew from the honors paid after their deaths to martyrs, and then to others whose lives were great examples of Christian virtues. Major saints, such as the apostles, came to be remembered with feast days. By the middle ages, many people believed that the physical remains of saints had magical powers to work miracles. The demand for holy relics led to widespread abuses. Chaucer’s Pardoner, who tried to sell an old pillowcase as the Virgin Mary’s veil, was based on real life examples. Credulous people were praying to the saints instead of to God. The Reformation attack on the cult of saints was justified, but fanatical. Stained glass windows were smashed, paintings white-washed, wooden carvings burned, statues mutilated. The Church of England sought a middle way, keeping the saints as examples, but not as intercessors or miracle workers. Today in the Church of England there is a wide variety of attitudes to the saints. Over the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church formalised the process of canonision. In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church had a tidy-out of the vast numbers of saints which had accumulated over the years. Some saints with flimsy historical evidence were eliminated or relagated to “local veneration”. Little is known about St.Christopher except that he was a third century martyr. Although there is no historical evidence for the legend of him carrying the Christ Child, St Christopher remains in the Roman calendar and on a million dashboards. Saints’ particular specialties have been updated. The patron of computers and the internet is St.Isadore of Seville.vi Often he’s pictured with his bishop’s staff and his encyclopedia, surrounded by a swarm of bees. I sometimes think a more appropriate saint for computers would be St.Jude, patron of hopeless causes. Whatever attitude we take toward the saints, reminders of them are all around us. Saints’ days, major and minor, are celebrated in our church calendar. Look at all the saints in the windows on either side of us. Saint Paul with his sword stands by the west wall. St.Mary and St.John watch beneath the Rood Cross. And beyond this building, some street names echo the name of the patron saint of the parish church. Embedded in many of our own names is a saint’s name. Whether we are aware of it or not, “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.”vii Will Mother Teresa be made a saint? Can anyone who had such agonising doubts about God be a saint? After the rapture of her earlier mystical experiences, God seemed to withdraw, just as she began the work she thought that God wanted her to do. When she needed God’s support most, she felt only emptiness. St.John of the Cross wrote of “the dark night of the soul”viii. St.Theresa of Liseux, whose name Mother Teresa adopted, said, “if you only knew what darkness I am plunged into”.ix On the Cross, Christ cried out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”x Very slowly, by identifying with Jesus’ agony on the Cross, Mother Teresa became able to live with her “dark night of the soul”. She continued her work, though she wrote “the smile is only a mask.”xi What does it mean to be a saint, to live a holy life? If we look for definitions of a saint, we can find some in the beatitudes in today’s gospel. “Love your enemies, do good those who hate you…Give to everyone who begs from you…Do to others as you would have them do to you.”xii These words of Jesus seem so simple, so clear, yet how hard it is to put them into practice. Does Mother Teresa qualify as a saint? Frankly, I’m not a great admirer of Mother Teresa. I dislike her reactionary attitude towards women’s roles. I strongly disagree with her refusal to allow any birth control except the rhythm method, or “Vatican roulette”. However, Mother Teresa demanded that the world pay attention to the poorest of the poor, to the wretched on the human scrapheap. She used her own sense of abandonment by God to reach out to those abandoned by society. She remained faithful to God’s will, not only through practical difficulties, but despite deep spiritual desolation. Perhaps saints are people for whom living a holy life is more difficult than for other people. What mattered most to Mother Teresa was not her personal emotions but her conviction that it was God’s will for her to work among the poor. In our culture, which so often values personal emotions over duty to others, Mother Teresa’s persistence may seem merely obstinate, or even deluded. And when we look at the lives of other saints, it’s clear that they were not superheros. Saints were not perfect. Only by God’s grace were saints able to do God’s will. Saints demonstrate the effects of God’s grace on ordinary people. Because saints were human: their failings and struggles should encourage us. Only by God’s grace are we able to do God’s will. Therefore we should take heart from the examples set by the saints. “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.”xiii AMEN © 2007 by Roberta Berke. All rights reserved.
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