The Saints
….. I believe in ….. the communion of saints ….
We are travelling in the footsteps of those who’ve gone before,
But we’ll all be reunited on a new and sunlit shore.
Oh Lord I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in!
Who are the Saints?
The phrase the communion of saints is a description of the way in which Christian people in mutual care and love share with each other. This caring and sharing was the mark of the life of the early Church. (Acts 2.44-45). We are not talking about those who have the word Saint before their names, those famous examples of holiness and piety that have been canonised into saints in the ecclesiastical sense. Rather we are talking about those who through the ages have joined together in the Church, dedicating their lives to Jesus Christ, despite their very human faults and failings. They believe in fellowship and communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. They are in fellowship with all the members of the Church on earth, inclusive rather than exclusive. Further they believe we have fellowship with those who have departed this life to be with God. As I still remember hearing Louis Armstrong sing on stage in Sydney over 50 years ago, We’ll all be reunited on a new and sunlit shore.
A Unity of Strangers
The Creed is talking about the unity of strangers that forms around the image of Christ, calling us always beyond our past into a demanding and sometimes lonely present. In communion with these people who have lived the faith to the end before us, we all trek on, alone but together, together but alone, depending on the hand and the sight of the other to take us further still. It is memory that calls us on.
In Search of Belief Joan Chittister writes:
Looking around the Western world it is clear that we have lost what people need most and will create out of nothing if necessary: a sense of spiritual substance and holy sacrifice, long suffering endurance and eternal fidelity. It is the communion of saints that calls us to keep an eye on the spiritual values of life so that we may live lives in which the material and spiritual are integrated, nourish each other, and give hope. It is precisely in the communion of saints that we find strength for the journey, hope in the face of despair, and sanctity whatever the sins to be transcended.
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