All Saints’ Day
The Revd Frank Sheehan OAM
A few years ago, I was showing a friend around Perth. He was visiting from the United States. We love him dearly but there is no doubt that he is rather formal, prim and proper, very serious. We were driving along Stirling Highway nearby the University of Western Australia when our friend noticed a sign which included an invitation to tour ‘Tommy More’s’.
Our friend was puzzled. I explained that it had to do with a residential college named after the English lawyer, judge and social philosopher Saint Thomas More who served Henry VIII as Lord High Chancellor of England and, unsurprisingly, was also a martyr. In 1960, Robert Bolt published his play A Man for All Seasons with Saint Thomas More as its tragic hero.
Our friend expressed discomfort that such a distinguished Renaissance figure as Thomas More could be referred to in such a flippant way. I didn’t say much but couldn’t resist driving past a large sign not far away which said simply ‘Vinnies’. Again, our friend was bewildered and even more so when I told him it was short for a society named after Saint Vincent de Paul, a priest who, during the 17th century, dedicated his life to serving the poor of France in very practical ways.
I shared with our friend that there is an order in Australia called The Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart also known as the Josephites. They were founded by Saint Mary MacKillup. The sisters wear brown habits. I took some delight in telling him that they are known as the ‘Brown Joeys’. By this stage, I thought we’d subjected our visitor to enough torment. But I told him that Australians were generally unworried by this different way of speaking about saints and organisations named after them. It was a sign of affection, not disrespect.
In Australia, there are numerous references to saints. Schools, hospitals and, of course, parishes are usually named after one saint or another. We have had an ambulance service, a television series, a terrace, a bank, some towns and suburbs and a few football teams with the names of saints. St George Illawarra in the NRL and St Mary’s in Darwin are two. There is no evidence that St Kilda existed and this name is generally accepted to be a mis-recording on the part of a Dutch cartographer who, in 1583, was passing an isolated archipelago within the westernmost islands of the Outer Hebrides.
The feast of All Saints couldn’t be more inclusive. It is about every saint and is recognition of the debt we owe to those who have gone before us; who have kept the faith and passed it on.
The church began as a group of people with a memory and a hope. Remembering is part of our identity and when we remember we are able to be very grateful to those who have shaped us; right back to those first followers of Jesus, those saints of the infant church.
The commercialisation of All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween) has done little to help us understand the feast of All Saints. It is a distraction so that, for reasons that are likely to be obscure, children dress up and have a great deal of fun observing things which are sinister and grotesque, paying little or no attention to those saints who have stood through the ages in stark contrast to sin and evil and who have lived lives of holiness, goodness, truth and love.
Some of our public figures have shown great interest in the saints. The once high-profile columnist and commentator Max Harris, himself an agnostic, enthusiastically promoted the case for canonisation of Mother Mary MacKillup calling her ‘A saint for all Australians’. It is a simple phrase defining Mary’s egalitarian outreach which transcended the ecumenical and embraced all, rich and poor alike.
Kevin Rudd has often cited the German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer as having profoundly influenced his own spirituality. The Australian poet Bruce Dawe dedicated one of his books to Maximilian Kolbe the priest who volunteered to take the place of a prisoner who was to be executed in Auschwitz and so died a terrible death. The man whose life was spared was present when Pope John Paul II declared Maximilian Kolbe a saint in October 1982.
In 1998, Pastor Bonhoeffer and Father Kolbe were among ten 20th century Christian martyrs who were commemorated with statues at Westminster Abbey. The martyrs chosen by the Abbey represent religious persecution and oppression in each continent. Apart from Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maximilian Kolbe the others are Manche Masemola from South Africa, Archbishop Janani Luwum from Uganda, Grand Duchess Elizabeth from Russia, the Revd Dr Martin Luther King,
Saint Oscar Romero from El Salvador, Esther John from Pakistan, Lucian Tapiedi from New Guinea and Wang Zhiming a pastor killed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The statues were unveiled by the Archbishop of Canterbury before the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. Church officials of different religious denominations from all over the world joined them.
The Australian writer, Patrick White, had a fascination with the saints. Especially on trips to Greece where he visited orthodox churches and monasteries, White would reflect upon and write about saints. In his fiction, he depicted figures he considered holy. These were men and women disregarded by the wider society who, nonetheless, seemed to see something others hadn’t. In his essay, Credo, written in 1988, he mentioned his belief in a divine presence and those who give us hints, suggestions, glimpses of the divine. He contrasts these ‘bringers of light’ with those he calls megalomaniacs and murderers; all who deal in death and greed. White quite liked to fulminate but he was also ready to be moved by goodness. In the essay, he brings his focus upon people who are unknown and expresses gratitude for those who ‘speak to us out of the historic waxwork museum, all those anonymous figures who retrieve others from the gutters, acting for them, feeding them with their limited means’. He goes on about ‘these humble everyday saints created for our consolation by the same mysterious, universal presence, ignored, cursed or intermittently worshipped by the human race.’
Well, Patrick White does deal in extremes and most of us are not megalomaniacs or those pulling people from the gutters. We are somewhere in-between, just trying to put together a life strengthened by God’s grace, hoping to make a better world in an unpretentious way. We look to those from the past who have courageously and quietly served others in imitation of Christ, hoping to learn from them and to bring a bit of light ourselves. Along the way, we have people who have profoundly inspired the church and the wider world, these saints of God bringing us his life and his love and inviting us to do the same.