All Saints, Year B (BCP) Revelation notes

[Revelation 7:2-4,9-17]

The Apocalypse continues, “The souls of those who were slain because of their witness to Jesus and because of the word of God...” These are, clearly, the souls of the martyrs, their bodies being not yet restored to them.

For the souls of the pious dead are not separated from the Church, which is even now the kingdom of Christ. Otherwise they would not be commemorated at the altar of God at the time of the partaking of the body of Christ, nor would it be of any avail to have recourse to the Church’s baptism in time of peril, for fear that this life should end without baptism, nor to have recourse to reconciliation at such time, if it happens that one is separated from this body under penance through one’s own bad conscience. Why are such steps taken, unless it is because the faithful are still members of this body, even when they have departed this life?

-- Augustine of Hippo, from The City of God XX.9, Henry Bettenson, trans.

1. Augustine here locates the continuity between the living and departed members of the Body of Christ in the sacraments. The Church is “even now the kingdom of Christ,” and the sacraments show forth the communion between the members of the City of God who are still on pilgrimage (living in this world) and those members of the City of God who have entered into glory. Eucharist, Baptism, and Reconciliation are all mentioned here.

2. These three sacraments are especially appropriate points of contact with the departed saints: In the Eucharist the saints are commemorated and continue to “give thanks” with us; In Baptism, we enter into the same Body of Christ of which they are already members, and, as they have, wash our robes white in the blood of the lamb (today’s reading); In Reconciliation, we are pardoned from those offenses which have cut us off from the Body and so are reconciled not only to our living brothers and sisters but also to the saints in the “Heavenly City.”

3. As such a liturgically-oriented denomination, we Episcopalians can appreciate Augustine’s emphasis on the sacraments. In the sacraments, the “souls of the pious dead” who are “not separated from the Church” are fully present and active. They concelebrants with us in the work of the body of Christ which is “even now the kingdom of Christ.” The great cloud of witnesses which surrounds us not only encourages us, but adds its voices to our praise, and its petitions to our prayers.

(I am put in the Lutheran Book of Worship’s canticle “This is the Feast of Victory for our God;” every Sunday as I grew up in small ELCA parish, we added our voices to the cry of those “gathered around the throne” as we sang, “Blessing, honor, glory, and might be to God and the Lamb forever, Amen!” We have this song as Hymn 417 in the Hymnal 1982, by the way.)

For me, it always was, and still is, a powerful sort of sensation to know that we do not sing and pray alone, but “join in the hymn of all creation.”