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| School of Dionysius, Hexameron Icon (Moscow, early 6th c.) Tretyakov Gallery. Top: Days of the week, symbolized by (and dedicated to) an event in the history of salvation, arranged clockwise around the Saturday of All Saints, which also symbolizes the eternal Sabbath of the eschaton. Bottom: Niches contain various categories of saints: prophets, 'fools for Christ', hermits, bishops, patriarchs, apostles, martyrs, holy women, and sainted physicians. |
Today is the eve of All Saints’ Day, a principal feast of the church, dedicated to all God’s “servants and witnesses,” known and unknown, “who have finished their course” and abide in glory. [1]
I
Historically, the feast appears to derive from the early Christian practice of venerating the martyrs; initially individual martyrs were remembered locally, and eventually groups of martyrs were commemorated. By the end of the fourth century, John Chrysostom could preach a homily “on all the saints in the whole world who have been martyred,” apparently in connection with a feast in the week after Pentecost. [2]
In the West, an annual commemoration of all the holy martyrs dates to the seventh century, when Pope Boniface VI consecrated the Pantheon on Rome as a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and all the martyrs on May 13, 609 or 610. In the eighth century, Gregory III (731–41) dedicated an oratory in the basilica of St. Peter to “the Redeemer, His holy Mother, all the Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, and all the just and perfect who are at rest throughout the whole world,” for the reception of relics of saints. A century later, Gregory IV (827–44) convinced the Emperor Louis I the Pious (778–840) to order the observance of All Saints throughout all his realms. It appears that Gregory IV also changed the date of the festival from May 13 to November 1, possibly for the very pragmatic reason that there was not enough food in Rome during the springtime to support both the local inhabitants and the masses of pilgrims who came annually to celebrate the feast. [3] By about 800, All Saints was regularly celebrated on November 1 throughout the western church.
The feast of All Saints rose to prominence in the East during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI “the Wise” (866–911). Leo built a church in Constantinople dedicated to his late wife (who would soon be canonized), Theophano Martiniake (d. 893), but at the objection of certain bishops the name was changed to the Church of All Saints. [4] According to an Orthodox tradition, Leo also decreed that the first Sunday after Pentecost be dedicated to All Saints—the date on which the Orthodox observe the feast today.
II
On All Saints’ Day the church sings God’s praise in “the congregation of the faithful,” remembering that this congregation includes the great “cloud of witnesses” who died in faith, and praying for the grace to imitate those who so faithfully followed the Lord Jesus (Ps. 149:1; Heb. 12:1). We, who remain on pilgrimage, praise God for all those who have finished their course in the faith and fear of God, “for the blessed Virgin Mary; for the holy patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs; and for all other thy righteous servants, known to us and unknown.” We praise God for “all the martyrs and saints in every age and every land,” because their example encourages us to persevere in the way of the Cross. We praise God for all the holy ones, because their fellowship strengthens us. (And many have thought that their prayers aid us.) We praise our Lord for all the holy ones—who are made holy by the gift of the Holy Spirit—because “the Lord is glorious in his saints.” We praise God for the holy ones, because in their mortal bodies the glorious life of Jesus Christ shines forth (2 Cor. 3:11).
III
We feast the saints because their witness gives us hope that even our quotidian lives might show forth the life of Christ. We commemorate the saints and martyrs that we might be spurred towards imitating these imitators of Christ. As John Chrysostom put it, “…to honor a martyr is to imitate a martyr,” [6] that is, it is by imitating the martyrs in their obedience of Christ that we truly honor them.
IV
All Saints’ Day has its origins in the feasts of the martyrs, so it is fitting to close with a reflection on martyrdom, using words T.S. Eliot places in the mouth of Thomas Becket (d. 1170), martyred archbishop of Canterbury. In a Christmas sermon, Eliot’s Thomas reflects on the way the church both rejoices and mourns in the death of martyrs:
“Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good Christian who has been killed because he is a Christian: for that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good Christian who has been elevated to the company of the Saints: for that would be simply to rejoice: and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world’s is. A Christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man’s will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. A martyrdom is always the doing of God, for his love of men, to warn them and lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of men; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lose his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr.” [7]
Later, as his priests seek to bar the door of the cathedral against the knights who have come to kill him, Thomas commands them to unbar the door:
We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strategem, or by resistance,
Not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought beast
And have conquered. We have only to conquer
Now by suffering. This is the easier victory.
Now is the triumph of the Cross… [8]
All Saints’ Day teaches us that Christians “have only to conquer now by suffering,” because our Lord has already triumphed in his Passion and Death. Vicit agnus noster, eum sequamur!
[1] “For the Saints and Faithful Departed” and the prayer “O God, the King of saints…” in The Book of Common Prayer (1979), pp. 838, 489.
[2] PG 50:705–712, ET: “On the Holy Martyrs” in John Chrysostom, The Cult of the Saints: Select homilies and letters, Popular Patristics, trans. and ed. Wendy Mayer (SVS, 2006), pp. 217–26. As Mayer argues, although the title in the manuscripts implies a general festival of martyrs, the homily seems to commemorate a specific group of martyrs who were roasted on iron grills.
[3] K.A. Heinrich Kellner, Heortology: A History of the Christian Festivals from their Origin to the Present Day, trans. “A priest of the Diocese of Westminster” (London, 1908), p. 325. Kellner relies on the twelfth-century French liturgist and theologian Jean Beleth.
[4] Glanville Downey, “The Church of All Saints (Church of St. Theophano) near the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 9/10 (1956), pp. 301-305.
[5] Collect for All Saints’ Day.
[6] “Τιμή γαρ μάρτυρος, μίμησις μάρτυρος.” PG 50:661–6. ET: “A Homily on Martyrs” in Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, John Chrysostom, Early Church Fathers (Routledge, 2000), pp. 75–8.
[7] T.S. Eliot, Interlude, Murder in the Cathedral, p. 47.
[8] Ibid., Part II, p. 74.