The “saints” of bygone days don’t wear golden crowns or sit on lofty perches, mouthing caustic comments on how poorly we, yet-mortal souls, measure up to the glory of days past. They, too, knew about keeping hope alive while also getting dinner on the table, faucets fixed, clothes washed, and budgets balanced.
The “saints” also endured wistful nights and wasted days. They had knees that ached in cold weather and sometimes spoke sharp words to dearly beloveds—including, on occasion, to God.
You may never enter a lion’s den, travel through a war zone, or hear a prison door close behind your act of conscience. Mostly, you don’t get to custom-design the witness you bear, the woe you endure, or the promises you make to mend the world as it crosses your path. By and large, you weigh the choices that come your way without the fanfare of stardom’s spotlight or angels whispering in your ear.
Saintly work is more common than you think.
Halloween
Like most, my early memories of holiday festivities are varied and (mostly) pleasant. But Halloween stands out as having the most distinct memories, since it involved an evening of roaming (without adult supervision) in homemade costumes throughout the small town where I lived, collecting sweet treats in decorated paper bags.
Then came the much-anticipated sorting of the evening’s haul: the keepers (the really good stuff), the giveaways (won’t eat even though it’s free), then everything else for trading with friends—which could go on for a week or more.
In Southern-flavored baptistic territory, All Saints Day—following “All Hallows Eve” (part of the origins of Halloween)—was never mentioned, much less observed. We didn’t believe in saints, though we did have Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon, namesakes of biannual mission offerings—a surprisingly feminine pantheon for a body with severely limited leadership roles for women.
I now believe there is no observance in the liturgical year in greater need of recovery than All Saints Day. In turbulent times and turgid circumstances, we need the sustenance of resilient memory.
Remembrance of those gone before us provides the buoyancy to continue the struggle despite bleak prospects. Such stories serve as vivid reminders that we are not the first to encounter hard times, and they assure us that sustenance (beyond our own ingenuity) will be provided.
Hallowing
Even more, telling stories of faithful witness—with faces and names and details—is far and away the most effective means of catching courage and transmitting hope. We need a horizon beyond market reports, electoral predictions, and the cacophony of broken-hearted headlines.
The work of imperial powers over a conquered people always begins with the suppression of indigenous language and, thereby, the people’s ancestral stories.
Jesus’ primary mode of communication was stories—not because he was pre-modern or philosophically illiterate, but because he knew stories have an animating power that propositions and apologetics lack. It’s still true.
Resilient communities are storied communities. They do the work of hallowing, of naming and memorializing their redemptive moments and characters—filled with faces and names and details. These communities connect such memory with that of the Beloved’s name and presence.
The preamble to the Ten Commandments required the injunction to memory: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). Jesus’ model prayer began with the hallowing of God’s name, thereby unleashing the consecrating power to invoke the Blessed One’s reign over creation: “Your will be done on earth” (Matthew 6:10).
Hallowing is declaring allegiance to what we revere and honor and stake our lives and fortunes on. Its practice is the harbinger of death’s demise amid joy’s full embrace. Hallowing is the asset that sustains us—wounded but poised and resolute—in the face of history’s brutal affront.
“Precious memories,” as the old gospel tune says, are “unseen angels / Sent from somewhere to my soul / How they linger, ever near me / And the sacred scenes unfold.”
May the poise of the saints—however famous or inconspicuous—be yours.
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Curator of prayerandpolitiks.org, an online journal at the intersection of spiritual formation and prophetic action, and author of, most recently, In the Land of the Willing: Litanies, Prayers, Poems, and Benedictions. He was the founding director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America and founding co-pastor of Circle of Mercy Congregation in Asheville, North Carolina.
