TRINITY · 1 NOVEMBER · PRINCIPAL FEAST
All Saints’ Day
The Feast of the Whole Company of Heaven · The Cloud of Witnesses Assembled
All Saints — the totus Christus, the whole Christ in head and members · Beatitudes — bee-AT-ih-toodz · Revelation 7:9 · Litany of the Saints · Sarum — SAIR-um
O Almighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord; Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys, which thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly love thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This is the feast the whole archive has been building toward. Every meditation written in this collection — every Apostle, every Father, every medieval mystic, every Anglican divine, every saint of the laity, every martyr, every confessor, every virgin, every king — has been a preparation for this single day when the entire company is assembled and the whole of the Church, militant and triumphant, gathers around the one throne and sings the one song. The feast of All Saints is the feast of the totus Christus — the whole Christ, head and members — the day when the archive’s purpose is most fully disclosed: not to celebrate individuals but to illuminate the one Body of which every individual is a member, the Body that includes Ignatius and Alfred and Lucy and Thomas More and Evelyn Underhill and the unnamed children of Bethlehem and every soul the Church has ever prayed for and every soul it has never known, the great multitude which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palms in their hands, crying with a loud voice: Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.
The feast is ancient — observed in the Eastern Church from at least the fourth century, established in the Western Church on 1 November by Gregory III in the eighth century, confirmed and enriched by Gregory IV in 835 when he extended it to the universal Church. Its theology is the theology of the Beatitudes (bee-AT-ih-toodz): the eight blessings of the Sermon on the Mount are the proper Gospel for All Saints not because the saints are the subjects of those blessings but because the saints are the proof that the blessings are real. The poor in spirit have indeed inherited the Kingdom; the pure in heart have indeed seen God; the peacemakers have indeed been called the children of God; those who were persecuted for righteousness’ sake have indeed obtained the Kingdom of heaven. The Beatitudes are not a programme for the aspiring Christian; they are the description of what the saints already are. To keep All Saints is to look at the cloud of witnesses and recognise in their completed lives the shapes that the Beatitudes promised.
The Anglican tradition received All Saints as one of the Principal Feasts of the year — observed with the full solemnity of the BCP, with White vestments (or Gold in the highest use), with the Litany of the Saints. The Sarum (SAIR-um) tradition of the pre-Reformation English church gave the feast an octave — eight days of continuing celebration — and the People’s Anglican Missal restores much of this richness. The feast comes at the turn of the year, in the final weeks of Trinity-tide before Advent begins its approach: the Church gathers its harvest of witnesses before the new cycle of liturgical time begins, and it sets the whole of what it has received against the backdrop of the Kingdom toward which it is travelling. All Saints is the feast of arrival seen from the road: the destination made visible to encourage the journey, the finish line glimpsed to strengthen the runner, the full company assembled so that those still on the way may know who awaits them.
This archive began with the Holy Name given on the eighth day of Christmas. It has traced the tradition through the Apostles and the Fathers and the medieval mystics and the Anglican divines and the saints of the laity, through Lammas loaves and Advent candles and the children of Bethlehem and the Blessed Virgin’s Magnificat. All of it has been a preparation for this feast, the feast that says: this is the company you belong to. The same Baptism that sealed Ignatius and Polycarp and Cuthbert and Thomas More and Florence Nightingale sealed you. The same Name that was given to the child on the eighth day was given to you at the font. The same cloud of witnesses that surrounded the runners in the letter to the Hebrews surrounds you. You are already a member of this Body. What All Saints celebrates is not something to be achieved but something already given — the gift of belonging to the whole Christ, head and members, in the one Body that death cannot dissolve and time cannot exhaust.
O Almighty God, who on this day dost gather thy whole Church, militant and triumphant, around the one throne of thy glory; Grant that we who are still on the road may be strengthened by the sight of those who have arrived, that the whole company assembled in this archive may be our cloud of witnesses and our daily companions, until we too stand before the Lamb with the great multitude that no man can number; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.