11102021 – The Saints Remembered…
A little hymnology for this evening.
“For ALL the Saints”
People love it or hate it.
One of our previous pianist’s REALLY-really DISLIKED playing this particular song.
Others despise its eight verses in length.
I never felt “one way or another” about it, until coming here.
It includes our namesake.
I have since grown to adore it…and love singing it, loudly, briskly, and boldly.
THE TUNE we use for it HAS A NAME, and I wonder if ANYONE KNOWS what that name actually is?
It is called “Sine Nomine,” a Latin expression, that means “WITHOUT A NAME” this tune was originally composed by a musician whose “NORMAL PRACTICE” was NOT to put down HIS OWN NAME to the hymn tunes HE COMPOSED.
At the time when he edited the FIRST English Hymnal in 1906, his name was NOT VERY WELL KNOWN, though he did later become famous – as a composer, and you will NOW see his name ABOVE OR BELOW his music.
His name?
Ralph Vaughan Williams…and he lived from 1872-1958…dying at the age of 86.
The reason I share this, is because THERE ARE saints “whose names” remain KNOWN to the “WHOLE catholic CHURCH” – because they were apostles, like St. Peter and St. Paul or great teachers of the faith, like St Augustine, or founders of religious orders – like St Francis of Assisi.
And there are SAINTS who are KNOWN just IN small, teeny, TINY, AREAS because that particular SAINT brought the Gospel “to that particular location,” and whose names are remembered today ONLY BECAUSE a church on “THAT PARTICULAR SPOT” is dedicated to their honor.
And – VERY IMPORTANT – there are SAINTS of past centuries and millennium whose names HAVE NOT COME DOWN TO US, and saints of the more recent past who didn’t MAKE THE NEWS, and “who lived their lives to the glory of God” in ways that NOT very many people EVER NOTICED or HEARD ABOUT.
There are a great many UNKNOWN UNSUNG SAINTS, known only to the faithful who carry them in their hearts.
A great cloud of witnesses that NO ONE could NUMBER…or NAME, except for God.
And those are the SAINTS, saints WITHOUT NUMBER, saints whose NAMES are now known to FEW IF ANY people on earth “THEY” are but “some of the ones” we are remembering on this night.
And rightfully so…
Quite often we think of Saints as some kind of SPIRITUAL GIANTS, people who seemed to be CLOSER TO GOD than we could ever hope to be.
WE sometimes think of saints as THOSE PEOPLE who have helped us, perhaps in unexpected ways or have done MORE FOR US that we could reasonably expect.
Or those who have GONE BEFORE US and passed on THEIR FAITH to us.
We do know this:
Saints to come in all SHAPES and SIZES and from lots of DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS and more often than not, they are “ORDINARY PEOPLE” like you and me, sometimes doing extraordinary things…and sometimes, doing the NOT SO EXTRAORDINARY.
Yet saints they are.
Some faithful. Some not so faithful. Some zealous. And some not so zealous. Some who wear their faith on their sleeve, and others who would NEVER DO SO. Some who are religious and some who would never consider themselves to be religious. Some who are spiritual, and some who would laugh at that designation.
The saints are all over the place. Some good, some bad.
We think of Saints as being quiet and holy people – but history is full of some “pretty amazing” and “curious people” who came to be considered saintly.
Originally, a saint was a person who lived a life of virtue.
Many saints from the early Church are saints by “general acclamation” – in other words, they were SO POPULAR that they simply came to be KNOWN as saints.
But, from very early on in Christianity, a saint was declared as such by the Pope (or in the case of martyrs, by the local Bishop).
Literally, the term “saint” refers to any person who is in Heaven – not just those so named by the Church.
And later, in the development of Christianity ALL THE BAPTIZED were referred to “as being the saints of God.”
So, my point being, we have known and unknown saints, all of them, members of the elect. All of them part of the priesthood of all believers, all of them, brothers, and sisters in Christ, worthy of our remembering this day.
Even those considered “Sine Nomine”…without a name.
Amen.