Text for the Month
“Let saints on earth unite to sing with those to glory gone, for all the servants of our King in earth and heaven are one.”
Come, Let us Join our Friends Above, John Wesley
Our month of October was known in Anglo-Saxon times as winterfylleth, because winter was said to begin at the full moon of that month.
Well, it may not quite be winter, but as the Starks of Winterfell say in Game of Thrones, ‘winter is coming’. It gets its name because in the old Roman calendar the year began in March, so October was the eighth month. When two new months got added, it kept its name.
Of course, for many readers of this article, October will be synonymous with Oktoberfest. As many of you probably know, it began in 1810 to mark the celebration of the marriage of the crown prince of Bavaria, who later became King Louis I, to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.
But for me October is special for two reasons.
The 31st of the month is the Eve of All Hallows, Hallowe’en: the evening before one of the great Christian festivals – All Saints. And 2nd November is All Souls Day.
Of course, Halloween has been hijacked by our secular society but in many spiritual traditions it marks a time when the ‘membrane’ between the spiritual world and the earthly world becomes very thin. Hence, the idea that ghosts and ghouls appear!
But for the Christian, All Saints Day is a reminder that because of our membership in the Body of Christ, there is an unbreakable spiritual bond between the Church on earth and the Church in heaven.
Our bonds of communion, forged in baptism, are not ended by death. Our brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith, remain our brothers and sisters in Christ.
And in October the Church celebrates the life of one of my favourite saints, St Therese of Lisieux. At the tender age of 15 she became a Carmelite nun and disappeared from the eyes of the world. She died nine years later from tuberculosis. A virtually unknown young woman from a little-known French town dying an unremarkable death of which the world knew nothing. Only she had written her life at the request of one of her sisters and it revealed to the convent that a saint had been living among them, though they had been unaware of it.
The book is called The Story of a Soul and very quickly the life of St Therese became world famous. She was made a saint in 1923, only 26 years after her death.
Why was she a saint?
Because she lived and taught what she called her Little Way, loving others in the small ways of life, no matter the personal cost. The smile, the kind word, the random act of kindness, the time given in listening to that really annoying person at work or the convent.
Small things which we can all do in loving imitation of Jesus who loved us and gave himself for us and whom we are called to imitate in the small and great tasks of our daily lives.
It’s what made her a saint. If we imitate her, it’s what can make us all saints, too!
Father Tim Handley, Vicar at St. James's Church, Sussex Gardens