Sermon preached at the Cathedral Church of St Augustine of Canterbury on the Feast of All Saints
Do you have a patron saint?
St Cecilia?
St Martin?
St Gregory the Great?
How do you interact with them?
[PAUSE]
Well can you interact with them?
That's a question we often get asked.
"Why do you expect the dead
to listen to you?"
they say.
"That's necromancy!"
Well, Hallowe'en was yesterday
so it stands to reason
why our more fervent
Protestant brothers and sisters
might have the dead on their mind.
But the saints are not dead.
They are alive.
They hear us.
They pray for us.
And we need only one verse of the Bible
to prove it.
[PAUSE]
Hebrews xii.1
"Wherefore seeing
we also are compassed about
with so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight,
and the sin which doth so easily beset us,
and let us run with patience
the race that is set before us,"
"So great a cloud of witnesses."
St Paul is referring to the saints
that he has just mentioned
who have overcome the world
by faith in God.
The saints are a cloud
of witnesses.
What is a witness?
To be a witness,
you need to be conscious.
You need to be able
to see, to hear, to be aware
of what you are witnessing.
The dead witness nothing.
Only those who are alive
can actively bear witness.
Inanimate objects,
like a smoking gun,
can only bear witness
as a sign.
They are not witnesses
in themselves.
So what!
So what?
The saints can't be dead then!
Our Lord Himself tells us that
when He says that He is not
the God of the dead
but the living.
Only the living can worship God.
So the saints must
not only be still alive,
they must be able to see
in order to bear witness.
What are they witnessing?
[PAUSE]
Us.
They are witnessing us
as we run the same race
of salvation that
they ran
- the same race that they ran
and that they won.
They see us strive for God
and they cheer us on.
We know that Heaven rejoices
when the sinner truly repents.
So they do not witness us
like a social experiment,
in a lab with security cameras
and television monitors.
They are interested in us,
they are cheering us on.
They want us to win!
And they surround us
like a cloud.
They are near us
even though we
can't point to where
they are.
Let's just take stock then.
We know
that the saints are alive,
that they see,
that they are cheering us on
that they are near us
that they want us to succeed
and that they bear witness of us.
Bear witness of us to whom?
You don't bear witness
for no reason.
[PAUSE]
It's clear that
the saints bear witness
of us to God.
They aren't being tattle tales,
telling God about
who snaffled
all the chocolate bourbons.
If they are interested
in our progress to God,
then they bear witness of us
to God.
They pray for us.
They have all Eternity
to hear every prayer
that we utter to them
and they bear witness
of our prayers
and add their prayers to ours.
Together,
the smoke
of the prayers of the saints
rises up before God
like incense.
The saints surround us
like the cloud of incense
that surrounds us
during our Mass.
We are surrounded by prayer.
We are surrounded by truth.
We are surrounded by love.
The saints are for us
because God is for us.
Although we sit here
blind and deaf
to the glory of God
upon His throne of Heaven,
we can be confident that
here, at Mass,
we are part of His court
standing with the saints
who behold Him face to face
and who pray that,
one day,
we will be able to do the same.
[PAUSE]
All the saints
are our patrons,
but some of their real lives
resonate with us
more than with others.
If you haven't done so,
find your patron saint
and ask for their prayers
and may their earthly example
guide you to stand by their side
in Heaven.
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