[Propertalk] Sundayt after All Saints' Day - Part Two

Wed Nov 1 14:25:08 EDT 2017

Part two of the draft for Sunday.
Bob

 What really stood out about Augustine, however, was the way that he
practiced what he believed about Jesus, yet at the same time he
didn’t condemn others out of hand. “He asserted that because the
validity of the sacraments did not depend upon the holiness of the
priest who administered them, irregular sacraments could still be
valid provided they were administered in the name of Jesus Christ and
in the manner prescribed by the church.”

	 What made and continues to make Augustine so important for the life
of the Church is that he never closed any doors. He welcomed everyone
into the discussion around the table. He never dismissed anyone
because of who that person was or what that person had done. We call
him a saint of Jesus because he made it possible for others to find
their way back to what was considered the true Church. Yet he rarely
pressured them. Of course he argued. And was renowned for that, but,
all the time, his hand was outstretched to welcome laity and clergy
and to recognize them as his sisters and brothers in Christ.

	 Did all the followers of Donatus convert? No! In any conflict of
opinion, that seldom happens, But Augustine never gave up. He was even
brought to understand that he too made mistakes. In actuality, it took
him a long time to become a Christian himself. His example to us
today, then, on this Holy Feast, is that love always enables people to
come together, and to find in Jesus the common ground on which to
build. Yet it DOES depend on the attitude and behavior of each of us.
We can reject people. We can cut them off. We can make life difficult,
if not insufferable for them. But we CAN also do all that we can to
find what we share in common, and give thanks to God for calling us
ALL to be Jesus’ saints.

	 Augustine is a saint in our Kalendar. His feast day is the 28th
August.

	 What does this say about how we think about saints? What does this
say about how we look on saints as examples of godly life which
impacts us in particular and society in general?

	 Consider Florence Nightingale. She was a British woman who had a
strong faith and desired to be a missionary for the Christian Church
in the nineteenth century, but who was stymied time and again, for all
sorts of reasons, often based on sexist and other prejudicial behavior
on the part of church committees. Eventually, she trained as a nurse
and served in the brutal cold, mud, disease, and death in Crimea
during the war there. Despite her incredibly strong and forceful
nature, she brought a sense of calm and hope – as well as health,
through her insistence on clean conditions. She brought a sense of
hope and calm to the medical staff as well as military and civilian
patients, with just about everyone with whom she came in contact. She
walked around the tented wards each night when people’s spirits were
at their lowest, bringing reassurance of love. As the light from her
hand-held lamp fell on the pillows of the sick and the dying, the men
would reach out to touch that reflected light. Even this mirror of
what she held and who she was was enough to help the hospitalised
relax and rest, if not sleep, though everything was so dark and awful.
She became known as “The Lady with the Lamp”, and held in
incredible esteem.

	 Florence Nightingale is a saint in our Kalendar too! We celebrate
HER life and witness, HER compassion and endurance, especially in
light of the vicious patriarchalism that surrounded her, HER ability
to reach out to others despite the cost to herself; we celebrate her
every 12th of August. Florence was admitted to our Kalendar relatively
recently – patriarchalism is alive and well!

	 I remember Bishop Bob Ladehoff telling me a story about this. He
served on the General Convention Standing Committee on Liturgy and
Music for many years, and was working on that body when Florence was
proposed for inclusion on the calendar. The first time, people
canvassed against her, and her celebration was turned down. Three
years later, her name came up again, and this time the vote to include
and celebrate her ministry was favourable. Bishop Ladehoff told me,
however, that people came up to him before the votes, and whispered to
him in a conspiratorial and demeaning way, “But she was a lesbian”
– even although this is, in fact, not known for sure, but is still
part of the continuing campaign to smear and denigrate her. As if her
sexual orientation has anything to do with the price of tea in China.

	 Augustine, Florence Nightingale, I’d be willing to bet that
absolutely every single person whom we adjudge a saint or a saintly
person has at least ONE thing of which we might wrinkle our noses. But
it must be pointed out that, in Florence Nightingale’s case, she is
blameless. WE are the ones who must be adjudged guilty of prejudice,
of bigotry – we and any others who make up stories, who spread half
or whole lies with our tiny, hardened hearts.__

	 The point is that there has been only ONE person of whom various New
Testament writers and we can say was without sin. And that person, who
was fully human, was also fully divine.

	 The point is that we dare not judge a person by a microscopic
analysis of every single aspect of a person’s life. We CANNOT
exclude anyone from our celebration of lives when God doesn’t. I
mean, look at Peter, for Pete’s sake! Not his feet only, at times he
walked around with clay up to his waist!

	 The point of our celebration of ALL the saints who ever lived is
that we’re charged to find, at the very least, one, or two, or three
or more things in which each of those of whom we’ve read or talked
historically has exhibited the image, the compassion, the love of God.
We should really celebrate All Saints’ Day every day of our lives,
because each day at least one person has left us something through
which we can find encouragement, and hope, and peace, as well as a
challenge to amend our lives, to set aside all the dirt of prejudice,
and bigotry, and injustice which fester within us.

	 Do we celebrate the betrayals in which Peter participated? Of course
not! And, PLEASE note – I’m saying absolutely definitely that
whether or not Florence Nightingale was lesbian or strong-willed and,
sometimes, not above talking explicitly to men who’d try to dress
her down; I’m NOT saying that there was even a whiff of anything
wrong in that.  We rejoice that, despite any of people’s
shortcomings, they were still able to walk, to talk, to think, to
interact to put down whatever was ugly, whatever was brutal, whatever
was degrading in everything about them – and to speak to us to live
as strong as they did. Celebrating the lives of these people is proof
of the incessant love of God in Jesus that takes what we do, and
cleanses us, and sets us back on the road, no matter how battered and
tattered our lives may seem.

	 THIS is what it means to be a saint – someone sanctified, made
holy by God, someone whose memory speaks to us of hope when everything
seems dark. So we will name those held in affection by us here. We
don’t gloss over their failures, even if our peccadillos make us
uncomfortable, just as we shouldn’t ever gloss over our own
failures. But we WILL rejoice that they, as a numberless host which WE
are invited to join; that they are those white-robed people, washed in
baptism and anointed by the Holy Spirit, whose life is and always will
be in and with God unto the ages of ages.

	 And for this we say, “Thank God! Amen!”

	NOTES:

	[1] “_The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North
Africa [1]_ “ by W. H. C. Frend St. Augustine and the Donatists -
Oxford Scholarship [2]
www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/.../acprof-9780198264088-chapter-16
[3] 

	2 _“ __Augustine, the Donatists and the Catholic Church”_ by
Shand Mark [4], in Article [5] Volume 91/2015 [6] Issue: 2, 10/15/2014
[7] Augustine, the Donatists and the Catholic Church | Standard Bearer
[8] https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/node/54579 [9]

	3 Shand Mark, Op. cit.

	4  Shand Mark, Op. cit.

	5 Shand Mark, Op. cit.

Links:
------
[1]
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198264088.001.0001/acprof-9780198264088
[2]
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwic7rH1qpTXAhVGz1QKHUTRAZ4QFgg8MAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oxfordscholarship.com%2Fview%2F10.1093%2Facprof%3Aoso%2F9780198264088.001.0001%2Facprof-9780198264088-chapter-16&usg=AOvVaw2u1oPA0KMdiMe9F7iUzHIh
[3]
http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/.../acprof-9780198264088-chapter-16
[4] https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/author/Shand-Mark
[5] https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/articletype/Article
[6] https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/volume/53743/91/2015
[7] http://mail2.spectrum.net/issue:%202,%2010/15/2014
[8] https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/node/54579
[9] https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/node/54579

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