But one thing I don’t enjoy quite as much as I’d like to is my drive down there. Ideally I’d drive to Craven Arms, park up and take the train, but there isn’t one that really suits, so mostly I do end up taking the A49 all the way down. “It would try the patience of a saint, the A49,” one of the cathedral guides remarked, when I told her about my journey. I had to agree. I like driving, but I don’t much like the A49. But it did start me wondering why patience should be the defining feature of sainthood.
All Saints' Day was last Wednesday. Its old name is All Hallow's, but these days it’s only the eve of All Hallows that gets much public recognition, and then more as the pagan festival Halloween, or as an excuse for a bit of a fright night. The shops are full of gory outfits. But the name Halloween just means the evening before All Saints’ Day. Centuries ago the Church seized on the pagan festivities of this time of year and turned them into Christian ones, remembering the company of saints and the lights of heaven.
All of this happens as the nights get longer and the days shorter, something that’s exacerbated these days by us having to turn our clocks back an hour. Fires were lit at this season to drive back the gathering dark long before Catesby and Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. It goes back so far into pagan times that it precedes the written word and the beginnings of history.
A vicar I know in a rather high church city parish still holds a solemn evening mass on All Saints' Day which he follows with a bonfire, fireworks, hot dogs and a general knees-up in the church hall and the vicarage garden. It’s his way of claiming back for the faith the November 5th fireworks events he rather disapproves of; but it’s also his recognition of a basic need for celebration and laughter as the nights grow darker that we all share, almost whatever we believe. And maybe we do also need a bit of controlled scariness, if only to allay our fears of the real thing.
These days we may talk about Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD - our inability to cope with all that darkness, the way we get depressed when the clocks go back: but I guess that's just the modern equivalent of fears that are primeval, the same fears that led our ancestors to light bonfires and maybe also to build places like Stonehenge.
But what's that got to do with saints, you may ask? Well, in part no more than this: that when things get dark and dismal on our Christian pilgrimage through life, then the stories of saints who've walked the same roads and stood the same tests or worse can give us inspiration and strength. And is it their patience that inspires us? Well, yes, it may well be. The patience of saints is praiseworthy: we remember them as people who continued to trust in God even when all the world seemed to be against them. So we can think of saints as lights to guide us and to cheer us, and what better time to do that than November, when the mists fall and the frosts form and the nights draw in with a vengeance. For the message of All Saints' Day is this: the darkness may be tough and scary, but it doesn't have the last word.
But if saints are lights to guide us, they’re lights that shine with a reflected light, a light that is not their own. And that brings me back to the stained glass windows I love at Hereford Cathedral - and here as well, come to that.
One of my previous churches has a great west window filled with apostles and prophets, whose robes and faces and haloes really shine out when the sun comes through. Mostly, I took morning services and the window was rather dark and even quite dismal on a dull day. Obviously I’m standing at the east end of the church facing the congregation, and the great window behind them. But if we did have an evening service, especially if the sun was just at the right angle, the saints and holy folk in the window shone out with enormous splendour. But only because they were translucent to the sun. The saints we honour at All Saints’ Tide were men and women whose lives were translucent to the glory of God. Their lives tell the story not of their own greatness, but of his.
Blessed are you, said Jesus; blessed are you when everyone reviles you, when the whole world seems to turn against you. This list of blessings has patience - or fortitude, perseverance, endurance - right at its heart. Singing as I do in a male voice choir, I see that the same patience is the theme of those wonderful songs we sing so many of: the spirituals that rose from the experience of slavery and suffering in the American Deep South. These were people who despite their chains were convinced by the word of God that slaves though they were, they would find freedom: freedom was what God wanted for them, freedom was their destiny. And the songs that arose from their experience of slavery still have relevance and meaning. In them we find a freedom message all can share, of a light to lighten all darkness, and a love to banish all fear.
Silence is golden, sang the Tremeloes, back in 1967. So it is; but patience and silence are two different things. The reason I say that is to make clear that there is no Christian ministry of the doormat. The patience of saints wasn’t about letting the whole world trample over them. Hymns like "Stand up, stand up for Jesus" and "Onward, Christian soldiers" remind us that the patience of the saints is purposeful, faithful, militant even.
Let’s reflect on that word militant. The old Book of Common Prayer of 1662 begins the prayer of intercession in the Holy Communion service with these words: "Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's Church, militant here in earth." Militant here in earth. But Jesus says blessed are the meek, the mild, the peacemakers; surely those who follow him should be gentle and patient? Surely Christians shouldn’t rock the boat?
Well, we should be meek and mild, certainly. Meekness and mildness though has to do with what lies at the heart of our Gospel call: love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. But that’s not the same thing as appeasing, ignoring or keeping quiet about those who by their evil do damage and exploit those around them; it’s not the same thing as turning a blind eye to those who by their neglect, their thoughtlessness, their greed are placing their own immortal souls in danger. I remember a preacher on Remembrance Sunday once pointing out the difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking. Peacekeeping may stop the guns from firing, but peacemaking requires more of us that that. Peacemakers though are militant, by which I mean aware, involved, sleeves rolled up: searchers after justice, challengers of injustice. Blessed are the peacemakers, says our Lord. Never confuse meekness and mildness with weakness or cowardice; the first are marks of a church that dares to be Christ-like, the second of a church that’s content to remain invisible. And which of these do we honour in the saints?
One of the traditional prayers of the Church includes this plea: "Grant us a patient faith in time of darkness, and strengthen our hearts by the knowledge of your love." That’s a good prayer for this season. And it’s good to honour the saints, and here’s why: we don’t honour them as alternatives to Christ, as somehow specially holy in their own right or by their own efforts. No, we honour them for the ways in which they lead us to Christ, and for a holiness in their lives that they received from him.
Saints aren't supermen or superwomen, they are fellow pilgrims, people who were themselves very aware of their own frailties and failings. We may honour them as great teachers, inspired thinkers, maybe as heroic martyrs, maybe as devoted pastors, but what we really honour is their openness to the love of Christ, and the ways in which they shone with his light.
Among my favourite stained glass in Hereford Cathedral is a group of four small windows that recall the life of Thomas Traherne, a parish priest and poet and spiritual thinker who was born and brought up in Herefordshire. It was installed in 2007 and created by Tom Denny, whose stained glass work is quite distinctive. These windows tell the story of his faith in a remarkable and attractive way. They’re quite different from any of the other windows in the cathedral. And that says something important to me about sainthood and discipleship: the way we shine is different, particular, it depends on who and where we are. But what makes us shine is always the same. We shine because of the light of Christ, we shine to share his love.
So let’s honour the saints of every age as our companions on the way, and as sisters and brothers in Christ. And at All Saints’ Tide let’s remember that we are all saints. That’s the word used by Paul when he writes about, and when he writes to, Christian believers. The saints of ages past have been stamped with the seal of the Holy Spirit, but so have we: the promise given to them is also ours. So may we too have the patience of a saint: when the way ahead is tough, and the sky is dark, and the task before us hard, may we too remember that the victory is already won; our Lord Christ is our King already, enthroned in the heights of heaven, and with us as we serve him and follow him today.
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