People's Prayers: Prayers of the People: Attitudes of Be-ing ~ All Saints Sunday '23 Yr A

For Sunday, November 5, 2023, Readings: Revelation 7:9-17, Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John:1-3, Matthew 5:1-12

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more, the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd...[Revelation 7:9-17]

I sought the LORD and he answered me and delivered me out of all my terror...The LORD ransoms the life of his servants, and none will be punished who trusts in him. [Psalm 34:4, 22]

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God; and that is what we are...And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. [1 John :1-3]

[Jesus] taught them saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit...those who mourn...the meek...those who hunger and thirst...the merciful...the pure in heart...the peacemakers...those who are persecuted...Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven... [Matthew 5:1-12]

All Saints Sunday is a few days after the November 1^st All Saints Day this year. It was always a special day for us kids in Catholic School because, as a Holy Day of Obligation, we had off from school the day after Halloween! We loved rubbing that in the faces of our non-Catholic friends. Oh, well yeah, we were obligated to go to church…but maybe some of us might have overslept.

Of course, this time of year we often saw biographical films of the Holy Ones, read hagiographies (bios of Saints), discovered who our personal patron Saints were and generally recognized Saints as mostly long-ago-very-holy-perfect-people who were not like us. While many of us had our favorites for one reason or another, for me the whole “Saint” thing seemed remote from everyday life. As an adult, I’ve read some accounts of some historically famous Saints, including a couple of fairly recent ones, whose life activities surprisingly didn’t always seem so, well, saintly.

It seems that defining "Saint" in this day and age still conjures a mind-image of someone many centuries and continents removed from our everyday place and time in this world; someone who is an example of complete perfection in every facet of life that is unattainable for us, and, if we're honest, undesirably difficult. Yet many saints and Saints, the ordinary and the officially designated, are/were flawed humans with real human frailties and struggles and yet their lives become exemplary. There was something extra in their attitude of life and in what drew others to them.

As an Episcopalian, I have come to appreciate that there are many on our Liturgical Calendar who are not designated official “Saints” but are remembered for particular gifts or positions that shone in ways that changed themselves and others in relating to God. The best discussion I have found of “sainthood” is from Sister Joan Chittister, which follows. This piece offers us some food for prayerful thought on ways we might discover our inner saint:

"For centuries the church has confronted the human community with role models of greatness. We call them saints when what we really often mean to say is "icon," "star," "hero," ones so possessed by an internal vision of divine goodness that they give us a glimpse of the face of God in the center of the human. They give us a taste of the possibilities of greatness in ourselves. What qualities will be necessary to live a life of integrity, of holiness, in the twenty-first century? What models of those values, if any, have been raised up to show us the way to God in a world that is more preoccupied with the material than with the spiritual, more self-centered than selfless, more concerned with the mundane than with the divine, more parochial than cosmic? (They) are male and female, Christian and non-Christian, married and unmarried, religious and lay, pragmatists and artists, named saint by a process or proclaimed saint by the people who lived in the shadow of their lives. They are people like you and me. With one exception, perhaps. In their eyes burn the eyes of a God who sees injustice and decries it, sees poverty and condemns it, sees inequality and refuses it, sees wrong and demands that it be set right. These are people for whom the Law above the law is first in their lives. These are people who did not temporize with the evil in one system just because another system could have been worse. These are people who saw themselves clearly as the others' keepers. These are people who gave themselves entirely to the impulses of God for the sake of the world." ~ Sister Joan Chittister, Roman Catholic nun and former Prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, PA, an activist, author and speaker on a variety of subjects such as spirituality, religious life, peace, and justice among others. The excerpt is from: "A Passion for Life: Fragments of the Face of God", Orbis, Maryknoll, NY, 1996

It does not matter if one is not an official Saint. There are certainly exemplary qualities of those who are official as well as those who are not, but they all stand out as Sr. Joan says, because: they give us a glimpse of the face of God in the center of the human. It is an attitude for us to acquire in our quest for eternal life. An attitude of being a child of God, and knowing that the full presence of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are within us always, ready to be shining through us, for our neighbors and for ourselves. In the Gospel for this week, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches those present that often those who might be considered the least of us are especially blessed. It opens up a way of living for us to contemplate, a pathway of living intentionally into the blessings of God. As we look into the ideals of the Beatitudes, we may discover new habits of prayerfulness and a fresh Christ-consciousness in things we say and do. Examining our own personal attitudes of be-ing regularly will take us through each day accompanied by that ever-growing Communion of Saints and saints until we, too, join the Heavenly Chorus.

LET US, GOD’S PEOPLE, PRAY

Leader: ~ Lord of All Saints and All Sinners, as we celebrate the Holy Saints of the Ages, we also commend to You the everyday saints who are living among us now. Grant us the wisdom to follow the examples set for us, to seek a saintly heart within our own flawed humanness, and to discover our blessed place in the Beatitudes of Christ.