“Blessed are you”
The soft autumnal colours of October give way to the sombre grey of November. There is a meditative and contemplative quality to this 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,” as Shakespeare so memorably puts it.
His whole sonnet (#73) applies the imagery of the dying of nature’s year to human mortality, seeing in ourselves “that time of year,” “the twilight of such day as after sunset fadeth in the west,” and “the glowing of such fire that on the ashes of his youth doth lie, as the death-bed whereon it must expire, consum’d with what which it was nourish’d by.” Though beautifully put, such observations are rather commonplace in the poetic, philosophic and biblical traditions. “Lord, what is man,” the Psalmist asks “that thou hast such respect unto him, or the son of man, that thou so regardest him?” and answers that “man is like a thing of nought: his time passeth away as a shadow” (Ps. 144, 3-4). There is no escaping the reality of human mortality.
The sonnet ends on a different note that suggests a deeper sensibility about the perceptions of mortality pointing to something greater. “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well which thou must leave ere long.” These poetic reflections “make [our] love more strong” and challenge us “to love that well which [we] must leave ere long.” That the world, ourselves, and others are to be loved well even in the face of mortality indicates that they are worthy of love. That can only be so, because they are known and loved in God’s eternal knowing and loving of all things. Things mortal are seen in relation to what is immortal.
This belongs to ancient wisdom and truth albeit in a number of registers. “There is no permanence,” the hero Gilgamesh is told on his quest for understanding in one of the oldest literary works of our humanity, The Epic of Gilgamesh, regarded by the German poet Rilke, shortly after its being discovered five thousand years later in the 19th century, as the great Epic of the Fear of Death; mortality, in other words. But there is a wonderful paradox. Gilgamesh is told this by Utnapishtim, a mortal who has been granted immortality (along with his wife) after the great flood by the arbitrary and capricious gods of ancient Sumeria. Utnapishtim is the precursor to Noah and the flood. But what kind of immortality are they granted? Not one in company or communion with others or even the gods but just the two of them in the Land of Dilmun, an imaginary place beyond the imaginary ends of the world. A kind of no place.
Shakespeare’s sonnet connects to the readings that belong to the great Feast of All Saints and its Octave. Yesterday was All Saints’ Day and today is both The Twentieth Sunday after Trinity and The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, better known as All Souls’ Day (transferred to Monday). In the season of scattered leaves, themselves an apt image of the dying of nature’s year, and in the culture of scattered souls, another apt image of things passing and falling away, there is a gathering into something more. This is shown in the readings that belong to All Saints’.
There is the vision of the prophet Ezra in 2 Esdras at the 1st Evensong of All Saints, which shapes the lesson from Revelation. Ezra sees on Mount Sion “a great multitude which I could not number,” those, he is told, “who have put off mortal clothing and have put on the immortal and have confessed the name of God.” Wisdom at Mattins proclaims that “the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God … for though in the sight of men they were punished, their hope is full of immortality.” And the Ecclesiasticus lesson at the 2nd Evensong of All Saints which begins with the well-known phrase “Let us now praise famous men” goes on to note that “there are some who have no memorial, who have perished as though they had not been born … But these were men of mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten … their posterity will continue for ever, and their glory will not be blotted out. Their bodies were buried in peace, and their name lives to all generations.”
There is in these traditions a constant reflection on mortality and immortality, all in an effort to think about what is the highest and proper good of our humanity and the meaning of our lives as a community of souls. This brings me to the last great figure from antiquity who helps us to understand the radical nature of blessedness signalled so profoundly in the Beatitudes. Who are the saints? The blessed ones, the ones in whom the Beatitudes live and move, “they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” “the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne” of God “shall feed them and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters,” the “God [who] shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” John’s Apocalypse is itself “the recapitulation of the whole Old and New Testament theologies of history.” In the times and seasons of scattered lives there is a gathering into wholeness and unity, the gathering of all things, and especially the gathering of our humanity in its truth and meaning, to God. Such is All Saints in the vision of the true happiness and end of our humanity alive in God.
Aristotle helps us to appreciate this radical truth. His Nicomachean Ethics examines in a thorough fashion the ethical question about ‘the good life’ for human beings. He argues that it is a life lived in accord with reason, recognizing a hierarchy of interrelated goods: happiness as pleasure, as utility, but ultimately, as contemplation, a life lived most like that of the Gods. The word most often used is eudaimonia or happiness but in a few instances he uses the very same word that Jesus uses in Matthew and Luke, makarios or blessedness. Yet Aristotle highlights the tragic condition of antiquity. That life of the gods to which we aspire is too high for us: it is seen but unattainable. There is no commensurability between the gods and us, between the mortal and the immortal.
This brings us to the great Christian mystery of the Word made flesh, of grace perfecting not destroying human nature and personality through the sacrifice of Christ. The recapitulation of all things in heaven and earth is accomplished in him. Our participation in him is the radical truth of our humanity at one with God and the whole of creation in the Communion of Saints.
All Souls’ Day commemorates the truth of our mortality but as embraced within the vision of All Saints’. The golden thread of Christ’s grace runs through the graves and death of our common humanity. Such is the great gathering of all things to God for whom and in whom all things live and move and have their being.
The Beatitudes signal this wonderfully. Everything is turned on its head but really it is entirely about how everything is placed on a new foundation, the foundation of grace without which the Beatitudes are impossible. To be persecuted is not happiness! But it can be blessedness, what is accomplished in and through great tribulations. ‘All God’s children got troubles’, as the old spiritual puts it, but more than our troubles there is the truth and life of God for which we live and move and have our being. That makes all the difference and marks the radical meaning of the Beatitudes.
“The poor in spirit” are not losers. They are the humble ones who are open to the things of the kingdom of heaven. “They that mourn” are blessed because there is comfort and strength given by Christ the Lamb of God who is with us in all our sufferings. “The meek inherit the earth” because they know it is God’s earth and not simply there for our so-called utilitarian ends and purposes to manipulate and destroy. “They which do hunger and thirst after righteousness” seek the truth and justice of God that alone satisfies and fulfills. “The merciful,” who are at the heart of the Beatitudes, get what they give, divine mercy, which seasons or perfects justice, in the perfect reciprocity of things human and divine. “The pure in heart” see God, knowing according to their own capacities how they are known and loved in God. “The peace-makers are called the children of God,” for they seek in their own lives and work the peace “that passeth human knowing,” the peace of God. Finally, “they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,” for confessing Christ, are blessed because he who is “the truth, the way, and the life” defines them, come what may in our violent world. A potent beatitude at a time when Christians are actively persecuted in different ways and in different parts of the world. This shall be a time for you – for us – to bear witness.
Our text is a summary of the Beatitudes. It gathers them into each of us, as it were. Blessed are you in the face of human suffering and pain. The Beatitudes are the qualities of grace given to us in Christ Jesus. They perfect but do not negate nor destroy human nature and personality. To attend to the gathering is all our task and challenge. Christ invites us to the great wedding banquet. “All things are ready,” as the Gospel for Trinity XX says, but more than our indifference there is actually the greater problem of our violence towards God and one another; a strong reminder to us of our sinfulness but equally a strong testament to what God seeks for us. He would have us be “friends” and to come to the wedding willingly with hearts prepared to receive him, having on “a wedding-garment,” the symbol of the clothing of immortality which belongs to what we seek in the truth of our humanity.
Something is required of us, our agency as grounded in God’s grace in the recognition of what belongs to the truth of our being with God in the Communion of Saints. It means to “love that well” which comes forth and returns to God. That is simply everything.
“Blessed are you”
Fr. David Curry
All Saints’ (transf.), Trinity XX, 2025