Saint Days
When working as a chaplain at a hospital, I was talking to my supervisor about different patients I had seen. In the middle of the conversation, he stops me and asks the question, "What has this patient taught you?" I thought for a few minutes, threw out a few answers thinking he was asking what I had learned about them. Shooting my responses down, he pressed further, asking, "What have they taught you about yourself?" I'll be honest, at this point I didn't know what he was asking. This particular supervisor was really into psychoanalysis, a game that I didn't particularly want to play at that moment; however, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt; that this may be an insightful question. In the end, I responded with an honest answer, which doubles as a great response for anyone trying to psychoanalyze you, "I'll have to think more about that." Perhaps, in the end, they might think you are ignorant but at least they will believe that you are a hopeful ignoramus, whom they have helped lead to the light of further self-awareness. And yet, all this time later, the question still swirls around in my head. The man's question had a point, though I am not entirely sure it was the one he intended. Contrary to the psychoanalyst, people are not there so that you can become more self-aware, they are people too. However, the bliss of an unexamined life soon crumbles.
This Sunday is the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. According to the Book of Common Prayer, this feast takes precedence over other Sundays in the Season after Trinity. You can see the days of precedence and their order if you look at Tables and Rules for the Movable and Immovable Feasts, on page l-li. While you are looking at the tables, you might notice that "all Fridays in the Year, except Christmas Day, and the Epiphany, or any Friday which may intervene between these feasts" "requires such a measure of abstinence [from meat] as is more especially suited to extraordinary acts and exercises of devotion." The reason why we are called to abstain from meat on Fridays is because they become little Good Fridays, pointing to the hope of the Resurrection present every Sunday. We need not look further than the prayer found at the end of Family Prayer, titled "Sunday Morning," which reads, "O God who makest us glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious resurrection of thy Son our Lord..." But if this is the case, that every Friday and Sunday point us to the events of Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, why would we celebrate Saint's days over any Sunday?
The answer is found in the realization that saint's days are not different than a celebration of the Resurrection. On a Saint day, we are reminded that even the Saint dies, though they now live with Christ. Their life shows us that God has created us to reflect him in our pursuit of being Saints. The call to Sainthood is not just for the few, it is for all of us. Reflecting on the lives of the Saints and seeing how God might work in you orients your life to the important things in front of you. What is God doing in your life and how can you join in that work? Also, it reminds us of the work of Christ in our lives, that we are all dependent upon God even in the small tasks. To be a Saint is to be used by God to reflect Christ to the world, this is the calling upon every Christian. And, lastly, it teaches us that death is truly not the end, we are called not to live for the moment but to live for eternity. In both life and death, our hope is in the Death and Resurrection of Christ. It is only as we are joined to the crucified and risen Christ that we understand the divine call upon the Christian life and are empowered to live it out. Saint days are a reflection of a life lived in the light of the Resurrection of Christ.
I have come to understand the point of the question, posed by my supervisor, as that people, in their broken way, can reflect Christ to us. Are we able to look into the eyes of those in front of us, and see them as being made in the image of God? Are we able to see God working in their lives? And can we come in humility and learn from them, or, at least, learn that God does not give up even on the lost? Can we learn that their path to redemption is the same as ours: the life, death, and resurrection of Christ? After all, if we cannot see God in the lives of the Saints and all we see is that person, then how are we to see Christ in the children or the elderly, in the poor and the rich, or the broken and hurting? "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." May we seek to meet Christ each day, and live in the hope of the Resurrection.
God's Peace,
Fr. Aaron