Blessed be God, for you have created me! All Saints 2025C

 

Blessed be God, for you have created me!

Some have likened Jesus to a Lighthouse, a beam of light that cuts through the darkness to lead us like ships to safety on the dry land of the kingdom of God. Jesus, the light that shines through the darkness, and which the darkness has not overcome the life that is the light of the world. Jesus, like navigators, also relies on lower lights upon the shore, which in relation to the Lighthouse provides a more precise picture of how to land in life eternal in God’s kingdom. 

All Saints is an annual feast of the Body of Christ, his Church. In the earliest days, all those baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jeus the Christ were referred to as saints, lower case. Lower case, but all-important amplifiers of the Light of Christ, that morning star that knows no setting. Over time, however, this festival of All Saints celebrated the lives of those Saints, upper case, who answered the bell to step up in their generation as those who follow Christ in all that that do and all that they say. Often these Saints were peacemakers in a world of force and violence. Most of all, they were men and women in all generations who one way or another lived lives that reflected a deep understanding of what many consider Jesus’s Magna Charta for Christians: The Sermon on the Mount, especially the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), and the parallel Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:20-31. It is a sign of our own time of the need always to remind ourselves of these Saints who represent those core teachings of what it means to follow Christ, for there are American Christians now complaining that the Sermons on the Mount and the Plain are “too woke” and no longer express values relevant to our world. 

There is a list of individuals in our Book of Common Prayer (1979) listed on their feast days beginning on page 19.  Clare, August 11, came from a wealthy family in the often-overlooked town of Assisi in thirteenth century Italy. She was inspired by Francesco Giovanni, or Francis, who had left his wealthy merchant family to “repair” the church, as the voice of Christ on the cross had called him as he prayed in the chapel at San Damiano, outside of Assisi. Francis renounced his wealth and his patrimony, and wandered from town to town gathering stones to rebuild the San Damiano chapel. But then he was inspired to go further: to repair the Whole Church. He gathered companions to found an order of mendicant Friars Minor. They dressed in brown, woolen peasant robes with a knotted rope belt and devoted themselves to Christ and serving the poor and the mortally ill. Clare was moved to join Francis and went on to found a women’s order of Franciscans later called the Poor Sisters. 

Francis helped Clare write a Rule of Life similar to that he had written for the Friars Minor. When Francis died, the Friars had begun to abandon the Rule of Life until Clare held their feet to the fire of the Rule and refocused them on their work of spreading the gospel through service to others, especially to those most in need, thus saving the order of Franciscans for the ages. 

Clare was not the only thirteenth century woman to abandon a life of marriage and wealth, as communities of women living together began to appear throughout Europe. Many of them had heard of Clare and the Poor Sisters. They would write to her for advice on how to order their communities. Some of her letters have survived, and anyone interested in how one might become a peacemaker, live a life of poverty, and withstand being reviled and misunderstood for not living a life characterized by eating, drinking, over self-indulgence, and merriment, can find much to learn from Clare’s letters. It took courage on behalf of Francis, Clare and others, to abandon what most would consider the good life for a life of poverty and service to others in the name of Christ. To become one of those lesser lights that amplify and extend the True Light that still cuts through whatever darkness attempts to prevail against it. 

One such woman was Ermentrude of Bruges, daughter of the mayor of Cologne. She took a pilgrimage in 1240, and ended up living as a hermit in Bruges. She heard of Clare and as a result of their correspondence, she made a pilgrimage to Assisi to meet her, only to arrive two weeks after Clare had died. After meeting with the sisters, however, on returning to Bruges she turned her hermitage into a house of Poor Sisters. In one letter that survives, Clare wrote to Ermentrude, and really to all of us:

Be faithful, dearest, to the one to whom you are promised until death. By Him you will be crowned with the laurels of life. For our labor is short but the reward eternal. Do not be confounded by the clamor of a world as fleeting as shadows. Let not the empty specters of a deceitful world torment you; close your ears to the whispers of hell and strongly resist its assaults…Freely support adversity and be not elated when things go well for the former challenges faith and the latter demands it. Faithfully return to God what you have promised and he will reward you. O dearest, look to heaven which summons us, and take up your cross and follow Christ who goes before us, then, after various and numerous troubles we shall enter through Him into His glory. With your whole being, love God and Jesus his Son, crucified for us sinners, never let the memory of Him slip from your mind… Watch and pray always. The work which you have well begun, swiftly complete, and the ministry which you have undertaken in holy poverty, and sincere humility, fulfil it…Let us pray to God for each other, then in this way we will each hear the burdens of the other in love, easily fulfilling the law of Christ. Amen.

 

“With your whole being, love God, and Jesus his son.” “Faithfully return to God what you have promised and he will reward you.” For All the Saints. Those lesser lights that amplify the True Light and Life of the world. Faithful women and men in every generation who hear the voice of Christ in prayer. As the popular hymns say, “And there’s not any reason, no, not the least, why I shouldn’t be one too.” For the truth of the matter is that we pray for those who have gone before because they have always been praying for us. And the Saints of the Church are people just like every one of us. We celebrate All Saints to remind us who we have been created to be. Saints. 

 “We all have the inborn wisdom to create a wholesome, uplifted existence for ourselves and others. We can think beyond our own little cocoon and try to help this troubled world. Not only will our friends and family benefit, but even our enemies will reap the blessings of peace,” writes Pema Chodron. By virtue of our Baptism, we all have the inborn wisdom of Christ. We have all been created to be the Saints of the Body of Christ, His Church, to help this troubled world. 

No one knew this more than a young woman from Assisi. On her death bed, the Poor Sisters gathered around her, and Clare said to them, and to us, “Go forth in peace, for you have followed the good road. Go forth without fear, for he that created you has sanctified you, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother.”  Then came her final words, “Blessed be God, for you have created me.” May each of us start each day with Saint Clare’s final words to remind ourselves who we are, and whose we are: Blessed be God, for you have created me! 

May we share the Life and Light of the world with others this day. Amen.