Year: 2021

“And he opened his mouth and taught them saying, blessed … are you”

Golden October declines into sombre November, a T.S. Eliot puts it (Murder in the Cathedral) but it does so in such a gentle way on this glorious day, a day made far more glorious by the Feast of All Saints, the vision of the glory of redeemed humanity. The wonder and the glory lie in what is seen and taught as presented by John in the lesson from Revelation and by the Beatitudes from Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount.

It can only be seen and taught. The vision and the teaching speak to the end and purpose of our humanity as belonging to the Communion of Saints and to our participation in that Communion by having “come out of great tribulation”. In other words, the glory only comes through the experience of the miseries of our fallen humanity in its sinfulness. Redemption is accomplished, not in flight from the world, but through its radical transformation by grace perfecting nature.

In this sense, the Beatitudes do not simply turn the world on its head, as I am fond of saying, but signal the much more profound idea of the redemption of the world and the perfection of our desires. The Beatitude about hungering and thirsting after righteousness “for they shall be satisfied” complements the theme of those who have come out of great tribulation, for “they shall hunger nor more, neither thirst any more”. They shall be fed by the Lamb “in the midst of the throne” and be led “unto living fountains of waters”, and, as if to sum up the theme of redemptive love, “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” The vision and the teaching are one.

Such is revelation, to be sure, but it has to be taught and seen. Such is the significance of All Saints’ Day and why it has an octave, an eight day period of meditation and reflection on the transitory nature of human life and of our end in glory. The whole focus and emphasis is on the spiritual community of which we are integral parts. In other words, we find the truth of ourselves as selves because of an awareness and a respect for others without whom we cannot truly be ourselves. To think about the radical nature of this spiritual community takes us beyond ourselves in our immediate concerns and preoccupations; we are made aware not of the “unreal city” of human presumption but of the real city of God, the kingdom of heaven which is at once the promise for “the poor-in-spirit”, the humble ones, and for those “persecuted for righteousness’ sake” in the first and last Beatitude. We are more though not less than the circumstances and happenings of our world and day.

To be reminded of this is comforting strength precisely in the face of the persecutions that confront the contemporary churches and in a culture of division and enmity. It will do no good to be defensive. The challenge is to be the confessing church, confessing at once our shortcomings and failings, on the one hand, and the wonder and glory of God, on the other hand, in which we find the true communion of our humanity united in the praise of God. The Beatitudes complement Revelation by showing us how God’s grace lives and moves us in the true realization and perfection of our desires, the true redemption of our humanity. But it has to seen as in the vision of John and it has to be taught as in the Beatitudes.

“And he opened his mouth and taught them saying, blessed … are you”

Fr. David Curry
All Saints’, 2021

Print this entry

“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge
and in all judgement”

It is, as Shakespeare puts it, “that time of year … when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang/ upon those boughs which shake against the cold,/ bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang” (Sonnet 73), the time of scattered leaves which lie in abundant heaps upon the ground, scattered leaves too many to number. “I had not thought that death had undone so many,” T.S.. Eliot says in the Waste Land, written just after the devastations of the First World War but also after the greater devastations of the Spanish Flu. He is channeling Dante’s observation about the souls in the vestibule of Hell. Numbers beyond numbers.

Yet in the season of scattered leaves and in the culture of scattered souls, there is a gathering, the spiritual gathering of All Saints’ and All Souls’. Today, the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity marks the Eve of All Saints, Halloween. Rather providentially, the Epistle and Gospel complement and prepare us for All Saints and its Octave of commemoration. Paul, in our text, prays “that [our] love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgement”. In response to Peter’s question about how often shall I forgive the one who has sinned against me, suggesting a limit, “till seven times?”, Jesus says “I say not unto thee, until seven times; but seventy times seven.” It is a deliberate exaggeration to teach that love in forgiveness is without limit. He uses number to point to what is beyond number.

In the lesson for All Saints’ Day, John the Divine in his Revelation beholds “a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues” who along with angels, and the elders (numbered earlier in Revelation as four and twenty), and the four living creatures, are all engaged in the ecstatic praise and worship of God. It is a marvellous vision of redeemed humanity, a vision of the Communion of Saints.  As the Apostles’ Creed wonderfully reminds us, the forgiveness of sins is the connecting link between the Communion of Saints and the Resurrection of the Body which belongs to our participation in that spiritual community.

The parable of the unforgiving servant is a strong indictment of our failure to act out of the abundant love of God in Jesus Christ. He is the forgiveness of sins and as such serves as a strong incentive to forgive even as we have been forgiven. We are recalled to the infinite love of God which is greater than our finite loves but in which by grace we are called to embrace and enact. Here is the love which properly defines us and belongs to the vision of the redemption and perfection of our humanity, come what may in the ups and downs, the confusions and uncertainties of our fallen world where we are scattered in our worries and fears like leaves on the wind. Our being gathered together can only be through the forgiveness of sins.

(more…)

Print this entry