1 November 2020 - All Saints Day

Last week there was an unusual service of thanksgiving at Southwark Cathedral: a service to mark the death of Doorkins the Magnificat – a stray cat adopted by the Cathedral and who achieved minor celebrity status.  Not everyone approved, with some deeming it as insensitive to the grief of bereaved families across the country, at a time of national deprivation and loss.   This point of view is understandable, but as the Dean of Southwark pointed out, this has been a year of multiple derivations, and grief is an unpredictable thing: sometimes the tears we couldn’t shed in one situation find their outlet in another.   And as we face another national lockdown, perhaps we need all the opportunities we can get both for grieving, and for giving thanks for the things that cheer us in difficult times – including a much loved pet. 

For this latest lockdown news to come on the eve of All Saints Day might help us: after all it is a festival of thanksgiving that happens to be steeped in the reality of death.  We can rejoice on this day, because in giving thanks for the communion of saints, we are able to put human mortality into perspective.    Our reading from Revelation offers a powerful vision of God's future, in which there is no longer hunger or thirst, and indeed if we read on, we hear that the tears are wiped from every eye, and death is no more.    

This is the context in which we give thanks for all the saints: the lives of our predecessors in the faith, both ancient and modern.  And amongst these we recall with gratitude those who have personally influenced us; those, to quote from the 1928 Prayer Book, ‘whom we love, but see no longer’, those who have shaped our lives for good. And who inspire us in current circumstances to do all we can for our neighbours, friends and colleagues. 

There is a marvellous prayer by John Donne that goes to the heart not only of the significance of ‘All Saints’, but also this celebration of the Holy Eucharist, in this particular place: ‘Lord, teach thy people to love thy house best of all dwellings, thy scriptures best of all books, thy sacraments best of all gifts, the communion of saints best of all company’.

‘Best of all company’: this profound insight is manifest around us in the memorials and lists of names of a whole panoply of people who have worshipped here before us, and played their part in the mission of this cathedral, diocese, and beyond.   The kind of people who, in the words of our Gospel reading, hungered and thirsted for righteousness, showed mercy and purity of heart, and who were peacemakers and worked for God’s kingdom. 

Today we rightly celebrate all who have worshipped and served here before us, but ultimately this cathedral is founded not upon their lives in themselves, but rather on the manner in which those lives pointed to Christ.  And on the journey of discipleship, in the midst of current deprivations and loss, by the grace of God we are still able ‘to love [God’s] house best of all dwellings, the scriptures best of all books, the sacraments best of all gifts, the communion of saints best of all company’.   AMEN.