For all the saints . . .

-
St. Julian Ukrainian Catholic Church near Rosthern
For all the saints who from their labours rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confess,
Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest,
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress, and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
(Click HERE and play while you read. Or not, as you wish.)

Today is All Saints Sunday. Pastor Charles reminded us in his sermon here at Hively Mennonite that we are all part of a “cloud of witnesses” who have courageously gone before us or walk beside us and others who will carry the torch after us. It's a consciousness we often neglect, the sense that we are both sheltered and challenged by the “saints” who uncompromisingly put their faith into practice in whatever time and place they find themselves. 

There were stories of Christians of the past who gave everything they had to be salt and light to the world around them, who never considered their lives saintly, but who simply did what the example of Jesus urged them to do.

It's an age of individualism, but that's not news to any of us. “My way or the highway,” however, has no precedents in the Gospel nor in the witness of our Anabaptist “saints.” Whether we excel at being arms, legs, eyes, ears or mouths, we are part of one body; not recognizing this can turn the witness of the saints to chaff. 

For all the saints is probably my all time favourite hymn tune and we sang it robustly here at Hively. We made new friends and were greeted by some we hadn't seen in years. Beside us in the pew a wonderful lady who told us she is also an Epp and a lovely lady in front of us who told us she, too, had once been an Epp of the Nebraska variety and we very easily (and very soon) gained the feeling that whether in Indiana, Nebraska, Ontario or Saskatchewan, we are all inhabitants of a great cloud of witnesses, the community of “saints.” 
 
“Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness,
you that seek the Lord.
Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
and to the quarry from which you were dug.”
Isaiah 51:1 

The quarry from which I was dug was Judeo-Christian, Gospel diverted, Anabaptist hewn, Mennonite labelled, Eigenheim sheltered. I can't deny it, I was born into a cloud of wonder, a community of saints. 

What cloud do you recognize, and what saints are you most indebted to? 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Please hand me that Screwdriver!

-
Image
  The shower in our bathroom malfunctioned. When turned on, water sprayed out of places it shouldn’t, showering everything in the little room. It had to be fixed, and one look told me that a normally educated human with a normal battery of intelligence, education and experience should be up to performing a repair. I bought a new shower head and set to removing the offending part, but having no wrench that fitted the connecting nut, had to improvise with a pair of pliers, and a clumsy vice grip from my scanty tool collection. With my daughter’s help the repair did happen and blissful, uneventful showers were again possible.   Later in the same day, a screw holding the seat of a dining chair to its frame fell out, and although I do own a screwdriver with about 15 interchangeable screw tips, none would fit, and I improvised by forcing the issue with an inappropriate Phillips tip.   We all rely on whatever tools we own when it comes to navigating our way successfully through life in a co
Read more

Do I dare eat a peach?

-
Image
  All the talk of Joe Biden’s unfitness for the position of president of the USA must have others of his age—80 plus—wondering about their own fitness. Most of us octogenarians are well aware of our physical limitations, I think, but mentally? How can I know, for instance, if the lines I’m writing are logically sound, or if they fall somewhere between inane and gibberish? How can I know if my diminished capacity can be trusted to make such a judgment? And what if my friends are too kind to tell me when to close my laptop? Hearing an aging loved one tell the same stories to the same people every day has the able-minded nodding knowingly and cluckingly (that’s a word, isn’t it?). We’re obviously too kind and too hip not to know that people experiencing obvious dementia deserve to be “handled with care,” and we’ve devised places and strategies to preserve for them whatever dignity is still possible. But it’s not dissimilar from the pain-relieving, ointment applying, chair-exercising, p
Read more

A Sunday morning reflection on Sunday mornings

-
Image
  Eigenheim Mennonite Church, ca 1950 Exodus 20: 8-11: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy …” I sometimes think about this on a Sunday morning when I’m all dressed and ready for church, sitting in my recliner with a hot coffee on one armrest and a bowl of oatmeal on the other and the sun streaming in across the carpet and the Post Office closed, Bigway closed although the Coop Gas Station will undoubtedly be open. And I know the Seventh Day Adventists hold Saturday to be that seventh day and so gathered for worship yesterday and observed in their way what they understand is meant by “the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord.” And I did some Spanish study preparatory to a month in Mexico and learned that Saturday in Spanish is Sabado . In German, the se
Read more