All Saints' Triduum: Other Observances of Easter

 All Saints' Day B, November 1, 2024
Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6a John 11:32-44

Lectionary Link

All Hallowtide includes the Triduum of All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day.

As Easter centers upon the resurrection of Christ as he was known in his various re-appearances after his death, the All Saints' Triduum centers upon what the resurrection means for famous followers of Christ, and for the lesser known souls who are the local saints in our own lives.

In this Triduum, we deal with the same issue that is engaged in the resurrection of Jesus: Can we believe in the perpetual continuity of identity in time of the human person?

The issue of personal identity in time, involves identity and difference.  How is it that I am the same person now than I was when I was an infant?  I am the same person but continually different with the accumulation of states of becoming.  My older self is a different self than my younger self yet I remain the same person.

When we ponder a post-death state, what can we know about us having older selves in our afterlives, and ones in continuity with the same persons that we are now?

Without have any exact empirical evidence of what the afterlife is like, we resort to the afterlife of the community which survives the deceased proving that in life and death we remain communal.

The known afterlife of Jesus is how Jesus has been retained within the lives of so many people for so many years.  It is uncanny how the memory of Jesus can be retained and passed onto so many people for so many years.  Our experience of the Risen Christ is known through his being so memorably borne in so many individual experiences.  It is quite amazing that the countless number of experiences of the Risen Christ are so radically diverse and different, one wonders how they can be categorically clarified as deriving from the Risen Christ.

It is an amazing social, cultural, and historical phenomenon that so many persons have claimed relationships with the Risen Christ in so many ways, times, and places.

The effects of these relationships with the Risen Christ have resulted in the creation of diverse communities of persons who have lived out what they referred to as their relationship with the Risen Christ.

Some of these in-Christed persons who arose in very local situations, became widely known because their manner of life gained attention.  Just as the original disciples deeply missed Jesus after he was gone and so they retained his memory, the saints of the church made impressions in their own times and in such profound ways that they created a corporate memory of their lives which became widespread.  In the history of the church, the memories of these saints have been retained in written record, stories, and legends.  There have been times in the history of the church when the church leaders have made Jesus so holy and unapproachable to lay persons, but available and accessible primarily to the clergy that the vast number of laity depended upon the mediation of the clergy for access to Christ, via the sacraments.

In this situation, the famous saints, and local saints were regarded to be more accessible to lay persons.  In the age of hagiographies, the writings about the saints and the piety of personal connection with them filled this need of people to have accessibility to holy people who were conduits to the Christ.  The devotion to and veneration to saints became a common practice.  St. Mary grew in prominence as a favorite and accessible mothering and intercessory saint for many Christians.  She retains that role for many Christians today.

The hagiographies were coupled with an entire system of establishing a "canonical" sainthood.  The official church practiced a process of "quality" control regarding whether a saint had the official sanction of the church.  One can appreciate that religious charlatans to deceive the masses regarding saints, their stories, and relics have always been an issue to deal with.

Anglicanism formed in the time of the Enlightenment and the Reformation.  Among Anglicans, some have followed the rather severe Calvinist tendency to dispense with the saints and their intercessory roles, because, after all, anyone can go directly to Jesus without the need of mediation by Blessed Mary, the saints, or the priests.  More broadly, Anglicans have accepted that the belief in the Communion of Saints, that we confess with the historic church in the Nicene Creed, is not an empty confession.  Rather, the Communion of Saints is the continual application of our belief in the resurrection of Christ, locally adapted in time and place in the lives of people who know themselves to be in Christ, and Christ in them.

The Triduum, the three days of All Hallows' Eve, All Saints', and All Souls, are anthropologically sound because they are real about the grief that we feel in missing the important people of our lives when they are no longer accessible to seeing, hearing, and touching.  It is not good grief resolution to pretend that the people we lost were not and are not continuing factors in our lives.

Why would we think it just fine to have hero hall of fames in every area of life, and then think it as detrimental to the life of the church, as if, the people who loved Christ the best would want their lives to be in competition with devotion of Christ?

In sports, it is common to have Halls of Fame, not just for the greatest athletes who were best known in professional sports in our country; but also for state, city, and town athletes who made their impressions with their athletic feats.

In a similar reasonable way, in the Church we have All Saints' Day and All Souls Day.  People do not live with great saints, but people do live with influential Christ-filled souls who impact our lives in significant ways.  Some of those souls may go on to be known widely and when such significant people died, it is faithfully consistent with our belief in the resurrection to assume that they live on in the continuing unseen family of faith.  If we talk to people whom we love when they live and ask them for help and favors, blessings, and good wishes, there is no reason to think that such communication should cease after they have gone.  And there is no reason to believe that any communication within the Communion of Christ, would be a diminution of the supreme place which Christ plays within our lives.

Let us today accept the anthropological soundness of the All Saints' Triduum.  Let us embrace it as "good grief" in response to beloved people whom we have lost to death, and let us offer thanksgiving and appreciation, for them being in the "apostolic" succession of bringing Christliness to our lives.

Let us embrace the good grief of the All Saints' Triduum today.  Amen.