All Saints
Birthing Spiritual Progeny
In my household, we set up a small shrine commemorating deceased loved ones at this time of the year, marking the three holy days of All Hallows Eve (October 31), All Saints Day (November 1), and All Souls Day (November 2). These sacred three days of Fall balance the sacred three days of Spring: the Holy Week Triduum culminating in Easter.
All Hallows Eve is rooted in the Celtic observance of Samhain, a harvest festival marking the growing darkness of the winter season. It was celebrated with gatherings and feasts, including the lighting of bonfires with protective and cleansing powers. The cattle were brought in from their summer pasture and sacrifices were offered to the gods. Samhain was a liminal space, when the threshold between the divine and the human, and between the living and dead, became permeable. Offerings were made to the divine spirits, and a place was set at the table for loved ones who had died. Masks were worn to disguise oneself from evil spirits.
Samhain was Christianized as All Hallows Eve when November 1 was designated as All Saints Day. By the 9th Century, the growing popularity of veneration of the saints led to the observance of a feast day to remember them. Saints were those Christians whose sanctity effected a power and presence that persisted beyond death. In union with Christ, their intercessions continue to shape history. All Saints Day celebrates our continuing communion with the saints, living and dead.
All Soul’s Day developed to remember all the faithful departed. It marks a more personal celebration of loved ones who have died, whether or not they have been formally designated “saints” by the Church. We acknowledge our continuing relationship with them in the communion of saints as well, trusting that they are continuing their spiritual journey into the fullness of divine life. We are all on our way to becoming saints.
These three holy days are a time to open ourselves to a deeper communion with the saints, and to renew our commitment to become saints. Too often, the saints are invoked in such a way as to mark our distance from them. These three holy days seek to traverse the space between us and the saints. In the Episcopal Church, the observance of All Saints Day (often transferred to the Sunday after November 1) includes the Renewal of Baptismal Vows. Our communion with the saints is in the service of our becoming like them: increasingly transparent to the power of divine love flowing through all things. The saints remind us of our baptismal identity.
The culmination of the spiritual life is not union with God, in a kind of blissful stasis. That is part of the experience of unitive consciousness, but it is not its end. The great Flemish mystic Ruysbroeck describes union with God as a full, conscious participation in the life of the Godhead, which is peaceful and dynamic. It doesn’t end in bliss, but is empowered by it to go further. As Ruysbroeck notes in his Spiritual Espousals:
For love’s sake [the soul] strives for victory, for it sees its crown. Consolation, peace, joy, victory and riches, all that can give delight, all this is shown to the mind illuminated in God, in spiritual similitudes and without measure. And through this vision love continues active. For such a just man has built up in his soul, in rest and in work, a veritable life which shall endure forever . . . Thus this man is just, and he goes toward God by inward love, in eternal work, he goes in God by his fruitive inclination in eternal rest. And he dwells in God and yet he goes out towards all creatures, in a spirit of love toward all things, in virtue and in works of righteousness. And this is the supreme summit of the inner life.1
To be a saint is to be a channel of divine blessing continually poured out on all creatures. The saints do not enjoy retirement! They are always active even as they rest in God. The contemplative vs. active binary collapses in an explosion of divine love. The force of this love echoes throughout all of history. And we can touch into it.
Commenting on this text, Andrew Harvey observes:
What we call death, Ruysbroeck is implying, is only, for those who have already known the resurrection, a door into an even-wider field of loving and transforming action, the loving and transforming action on behalf of all being everywhere of the saints, the angels, the archangels, cherubim, and seraphim, and other divine agents of the fire of love whose names we cannot know and whose continuing eternal work we cannot, in our present state of knowledge, even imagine . . .
Evelyn Underhill writes, commenting on Richard of St. Victor, “the soul brings forth its children. It is the agent of a fresh outbirth of spiritual vitality . . . the helpmate of the transcendent order, the mother of a spiritual progeny. The great unitive mystics are each of them founders of spiritual families, centers from which radiates new life. The ‘flowing lights’ of the Godhead is focused on them, as in a lens, only that it may pass through them to spread out on every side . . .”
Such is the glory that Jesus Christ won for himself and for all of us; such is the glory the Christ pours into all those who turn to him; such is the glory of the endless life he makes possible.2
Saints do not escape from the world. They become bridges between the realms, for the sake of the healing of the world; until God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. This is why we celebrate these three holy days: to open our hearts to become their spiritual progeny. Even more: so that one day, we too, may become mothers of spiritual progeny.
These sacred three days are not a preoccupation with death. They are a celebration of enduring life, of resurrection life.
The saints are very near us. This year, I’m particularly mindful of Sarah Lewis of blessed memory. Sarah was a spiritual director, teacher, and mystic of great insight and power. She continues to intercede for me and many others. Christ was born in her, so that she might give birth to others. I’m grateful to be one of her spiritual progeny.
Blessed Sarah, pray for us.
Andrew Harvey, Son of Man: The Mystical Path To Christ (New York: Penguin Putman Inc., 1998), p. 127.
Harvey, p. 127-128.