In traditions that use the Apostles' Creed, worshippers are familiar with the turn of phrase, "The Communion of Saints." The Nicene Creed, in turn, speaks of, "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church," in pretty much the same place. The fact that both these statements occur structurally in the same neighbourhood is not accidental.
Many of us picture saints only as those who have gone before, who have died, and now are at rest in the presence of God Almighty. That view is not wrong, there is much Scripture to support it. That they pray is upheld in many passages, many of them in the Book of Revelation, but likewise in late Jewish Wisdom literature, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. Our Lord in fact refers to those who died in the Lord as alive, saying that God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not God of the dead but of the living.
However, that picture is incomplete.
The same Wisdom literature, the Prophets, the Gospels, particularly the Epistles, paint the Church on earth as the community of saints, of holy ones, people set apart from the profane and delivered from slavery to Sin and Corruption. Needless to say, many of us would take that view with some degree of reservation. Our churches are full of people engaged in petty squabbles, jealousies, agendas, and sadly, egregiously wicked and startlingly harmful behaviour (if you are at a loss I mention the excesses of the Inquisition, Reservation and Residential Schools, colonial cultural aggression, sexual scandals, embezzlement and simony on staggering scales...I could go on). One can look at that catalogue of sins and think "holy" might be a bit of a stretch.
Think of the parable of the wheat and the tares (to remind us, tares are a specific weed that looks like wheat but is somewhat toxic, and moreso as percentages increase). The parable tells us among the wholesome is the toxic. They are permitted to stay in place so that their uprooting does not drag the wholesome with them, at the risk of spreading their toxicity. It is when their product is harvested that the discernment, the separation takes place.
The meaning of this is that the communion of saints is indeed here on earth among the living, among the toxicity. Even within ourselves we see both the holy and the profane. In ourselves we are called to starve the profane, to die to it day after day, so that throughout our lives' struggles we tend more toward righteousness. That is what it means to be a saint on earth, the process of actualizing ourselves as saints in active discipleship of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, As we grow in goodness, kindness, gentleness, love, self-control, patience, joy, peace, and humility, we grow more into that great unity, the Synaxis, the Congregation of All the Saints.
May God complete in us that great work of righteousness.
East Window in Chancel of All Saints' Church, Leek, Staffordshire, Morris & Company 1923, photo by "Sheepdog Rex" on Flickr
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