When I was a child, it was always a treat for my parents, brother, and me to pile into the car and pay a visit to my great-grandparents. We called them Big MawMaw and Big PawPaw, but it wasn’t because they were of considerable physical stature; they were, in fact, not. Big PawPaw was on the short side, and by the time I knew both my great-grandparents, they were looking a bit frail. Nor were their magnified grand-parental titles because they had large personalities. They were quiet, gentle, unassuming people. They were not terribly well educated. They certainly wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. But they were spiritual giants on the inside.
Big MawMaw and Big PawPaw were devout Roman Catholics, and it seemed as if every time we visited their house, they were in the middle of saying the rosary. It was clear that they spent much of their time in prayer. I still remember entering their simple home in the small southeast Texas town where they lived. They each had their own armchair, with Kleenexes often stuffed in the sides of the cushions. I’m sure they spent many hours in those chairs, praying and engaging in conversation with one another.
Big MawMaw and Big PawPaw both had striking, beautiful blue eyes. They were kind and loving eyes, and they seemed to look right through you into your soul. The most touching part of a visit to their home was the departure. At the door of their modest house, my great-grandfather would put his hands on each of our heads and send us off with a blessing and prayer. We simply couldn’t leave their home without a proper dismissal; everything in their lives was rooted in prayer. I was young and not yet a church snob and I didn’t care that Big PawPaw wasn’t a priest but was still blessing us. Even now, I don’t care. I see that there was nothing pretentious in what he did. His was a sheer, gracious gesture of love.
In my youthful understanding of the world, it was sort of family lore that Big MawMaw and Big PawPaw were both saintly people. Sure, they prayed a lot, but their holiness was something more than that. Their demeanor pointed beyond themselves to something greater. It was clear that they were very, very close to God.
But the retiring simplicity and deep faith of my great grandparents belied the complicated experiences of their lives. They were the source of a massive family, including fourteen children, dozens of grandchildren, and hundreds of great-grandchildren. Big MawMaw and Big PawPaw were both born in poor, rural Louisiana and later moved to southeast Texas to make a living and establish a home. I’m sure they never had much money in the bank, and yet they raised fourteen beautiful children to have love for Christ. I can only imagine how tiring and difficult it must have been to put food on the table.
And my great-grandparents knew sadness and grief, too. Both survived by nearly twenty years the early death to cancer of their eldest daughter, my grandmother. I wonder, too, if they ever felt reviled for their faith, especially as devout Roman Catholics in southeast Texas where anti-Catholic sentiment was common.
Yes, Big MawMaw and Big PawPaw were unassuming folk, but they’d led a rich life of experiences over which to sorrow and rejoice. And what I remember most about them was that in spite of their long lives full of blessings and woes, in spite of all that could have made them cranky, jaded, and bitter in their old age, they exhibited nothing but a quiet grace that could only come from the hand of God.
Big MawMaw and Big PawPaw aren’t on any calendar of saints in the church, and they never will be. And I have no way of knowing where they are on their pilgrimage towards the presence of God, but I have a sense that they are already rejoicing in the nearer company of God. And I do know that when I was in their company, I felt more nearly in the presence of God. By God’s grace, they had become so large on the inside, and Christ had so filled and overflowed their hearts, that they communicated God’s love simply by who they were.
What a gift it is this evening to celebrate those unknown blessed ones, those quiet, gentle, and faithful examples of Christ-shaped lives who we trust are now bathed in God’s eternal light. These saints have emptied themselves so that they could be capacious enough on the inside to be filled with the radiant love of God. These are holy people who have made God seem closer to us through their lives, who have encouraged us to open our hearts more to God’s grace. Such humble folk may not have journeyed from this earthly life to the next in spectacular ways. Many died quietly in their own beds of old age or illness. Some did indeed suffer violent deaths for the name of Christ. But all were, in fact, imperfect human beings, just like we are. They were sinners in need of redeeming, just like we are. They prayerfully and patiently awaited a different kingdom than the one they inhabited on earth, just like we do, and we believe they are now rejoicing in that eternal kingdom, praying and interceding for us.
This is why I have a particular fondness for the hymn, “I sing a song of the saints of God.” In my experience, you either love this hymn or you hate it, so if you hate it, don’t judge me. But underneath the Romantic veneer of this simple hymn is a vivid testament to those ordinary human beings who have radiated something of God’s glory here on earth. In an age of attention-seeking antics and lust for fame, saintliness in the quotidian existence of daily life deserves some attention, too, don’t you think?
True, “I sing a song of the saints of God” does mention heroic saintliness—saints mauled by wild beasts and soldiers fighting for the faith—but there’s also a whole host of other folk in that litany of saints: there’s a doctor, a queen, a shepherdess, even—can you believe it?—a priest! And there are saints enjoying cups of hot tea, taking the train, or sailing the waters of the sea. Apart from the context of a romanticized England, they are rather similar to some people we might have known in our lives. These ordinary saints include ones who are near to our own hearts and contexts, not simply those who sacrificed their lives for Christ in the days of medieval torture or ones who died in the Crusades or others who were sent to the guillotine by the edicts of kings and queens. These saints are ones who might have been small on the outside but were large enough on the inside to let God fill every inch of their hearts.
Maybe you have known some of these saints, those who have endured the trials of poverty, hunger, tragedy, and persecution and have yet remained faithful to Christ. Look around, and you might see saints in formation all around us, those who maintain a steadfast gaze on the crown of glory even in the midst of a brutal world that wreaks misfortune on so many unfortunate souls. The saints are those blessed ones who have not let the constricting ills of the world constrain their expansive hearts. Their hearts have instead been filled to the brim with love for God, and that love has spilled over into the broken world around them, evidence that God’s blessings have greater power than earth’s woes.
The real challenge of saintliness lies in keeping our own hearts spacious and generous, in continuing to set our hope on Christ and God’s promised blessings, even when, and especially when, we are besieged by earthly woes. Because it is so easy to let our hearts narrow with fear or become hardened with skepticism, and there are plenty of reasons for hopelessness. When the poor are only getting poorer and the hungry hungrier and tragedy follows upon tragedy and persecutions only multiply, the hope to which we have been called can seem like a crazy pipedream.
But God demands more of his saints than jaded despair. God has upped the ante because the more we give of ourselves, especially in the midst of woes, the more we can receive of his love. The answer to all the sorrows that surround us is not to become smaller and more turned inwards on ourselves in defense but instead to keep our eyes set on the hope of glory, to fling wide the doors of our hearts, and to let Christ come in and fill our cups so that his love can run over into the world around us.
Imagine a world like that, full of saints in the subway and at the grocery store and even in Rittenhouse Square. Notice the love of God bursting forth in the dazzling faces of those saints who have made themselves vast enough on the inside to receive God’s grace, no matter how insignificant they appear on the outside. And then imagine how infinitely better it is in that world on the other side of the veil, where God is gathering his saints to himself, and they are singing in unison for ever and ever around God’s dazzling throne. O what their joy and their glory must be!
Tomorrow, at the All Souls’ Requiem, I will be praying for my Big MawMaw and Big PawPaw, because it’s only for God to know where they are in their journey towards union with him. I can’t officially say that they are saints and are now in heaven. But I have a strong feeling that they are very close to God right now, I hope in heaven, praying for me and for us. All those saints we have known and loved, and so many that we have never known but who yet love us simply because we are their brothers and sisters in Christ, they are there, too. I imagine that they are all completely filled with God’s light and glory and are yearning for us to rejoice and to open our hearts so that God can fill us completely. So, “let us sing a song of the saints of God, patient, and brave and true.”* And, God helping, couldn’t each of us be one, too?
Preached by Father Kyle Babin
All Saints’ Day 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
*text from “I sing a song of the saints of God,” by Lesbia Scott, from The Hymnal 1982