Revelation 21.1-6a, John 11.32-44
All Saints Day, 4 November 2018
Eldroth, Keasden
Just last month the Roman Catholic Church canonised the late Oscar Romero, who as Archbishop of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, was a vocal advocate of the rights of the poor under that country’s repressive regime throughout the 1970s, and who was assassinated by a right-wing death squad whilst saying mass in a San Salvador chapel on 24 March 1980, aged 62.
250,000 mourners from all over the world attended his funeral, where the Pope’s personal delegate eulogised Romero as a "beloved, peacemaking man of God," and stated that "his blood will give fruit to brotherhood, love and peace." These were words of defiant hope rather than realism, because even as they were being spoken, on the streets near San Salvador Cathedral smoke bombs exploded and rifle shots were fired, and in the consequent panicked stampedes many people were killed and injured. [1]
Words of defiant hope rather than realism, but Romero’s eulogy nevertheless carried a deeper truth about him and all the saints: that the Saints are in the business of making things new. Oscar Romero was sainted not because his opposition to the violence of all sides in the Salvadorian Civil War succeeded in changing things politically - it didn’t. For over a decade following his murder innumerable people disappeared, and according to UN reports over 75,000 people were killed.
No, Romero was sainted because when he spoke out about human rights abuses the silenced poor of that country heard him speaking their voice; he was sainted because when he preached a gospel of peace he opened up the possibility of another world in the hearts and minds of his congregations; he was sainted because his example of self-giving love for the most vulnerable people inspired countless others across the world to live lives of self-giving love for the sake of others. The Saints are in the business of making things new: there are many who over the past forty years have testified that the inspirational words and example of Oscar Romero turned their world around.
Likewise that other famous recently-canonised saint Mother Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity provided care for, in her words, "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone". From a congregation of just 13 sisters when she began this work in 1950, there are now over 4,500 Missionaries of Charity running homes, relief work and charity centres worldwide. [2]
Controversially, to some, Teresa never made a priority of physically saving people’s lives, seeing that as an impractical aspiration in the conditions in which she worked. Rather in her Homes for the Dying she focused on giving people the experience of "A beautiful death". "A beautiful death", Teresa said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels - loved and wanted."
The Saints are in the business of making things new: these days much is being spoken about the ways in which people can prepare for ‘a good death’; for many families this has been a great blessing. It could be said that Saint Teresa of Calcutta helped popularise this way of thinking.
Are the saints perfect, though? Are they unreachable in their devoutness and strength of spirituality? When Malcolm Muggeridge produced his 1969 documentary about Mother Teresa, Something Beautiful for God, the Home for the Dying was so dark inside that his film crew thought it unlikely they’d be able to use the footage. Back in England, though, they discovered that the footage was extremely well-lit, and Muggeridge called it a miracle of "divine light" from Teresa. Other crew members put it down to the new type of ultra-sensitive Kodak film they were using. [3]
I quite like the bathos of that, because it offers us respite from the idea that Teresa was perfect and in some way holier than anyone else, and invites us to see her and every other saint as people more like you and me. No-one likes a plaster saint, after all, do we? Or no-one relates to them easily. Those who make a show of being without moral faults or human weakness.
Some serious criticisms have been made of Mother Teresa’s work - for the low quality of medical care she provided, or suggestions of forced conversions, among other things; criticisms hopefully being addressed by the Missionaries of Charity going forward. But these criticisms do help us see Teresa not a perfect religious sister serving God in an aura of "divine light", but an ordinary woman muddling along in the darkness, following her instincts to do the best she could for others.
The Saints are in the business of making things new: they don’t do it perfectly. Because like us they are imperfect people. But they do it. That’s the thing. And so they’re saints because they invite us to see that we can be in the business of making things new, too.
I really doubt the story is true of old Irish Saint Kevin and the blackbird, but I love it all the same. Kevin, as was his daily habit, going into the woods to pray, placing himself inside a very large hollowed out tree; stretching out his arms in devotion making them look like branches; and a blackbird lands in one of his turned-up palms, settles down to nest and lays its eggs. Seeing, feeling all this, Kevin keeps his arm out and palm open for days and weeks, until the moment that the eggs hatch and the newborn birds are fledged and fly away.
In the words of the poet Seamus Heaney,
… since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time
From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth
Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river,
‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays … [4]
I love the silly old story of Irish Saint Kevin and the blackbird because whenever I hear it, it renews my vision of how deep and how precious is our relationship with the earth and all other living things. It gives me pause to think of how, like Kevin, I might labour and not seek reward for the good of these creatures of earth. Kevin does the saint’s work in my heart, mind and imagination.
And so I appeal to you today, to find some time to spend again with your favourite saints, to re-discover the stories of their imperfect but devoted lives.
For the Saints are in the business of making things new: they can renew our vision of ourselves and our place in the world, and, standing, walking, living in their company, they help us go about the business of making things new, too.
Notes
[1] Wikipedia: Óscar Romero.
[2] Wikipedia: Mother Teresa.
[3] Wikipedia: Mother Teresa: Recognition and reception: Elsewhere.
[4] Seamus Heaney, St Kevin and the Blackbird.
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