Daily Devotional • November 1
All Saints’ Day
A Reading from Revelation 21:1-4, 22-27, 22:1-5
21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home* of God is among mortals.
He will dwell* with them;
they will be his peoples,*
and God himself will be with them;*
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
22 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. 26 People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations. 27 But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practises abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
22 Then the angel* showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life* with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants* will worship him; 4 they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign for ever and ever.
Meditation
As I alluded to yesterday, we are today in what I think of as the second day of a mini Triduum, an echo of the great Paschal Triduum which is Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. This would pair today, All Saints Day, with Good Friday. How does this relationship help us to reflect more deeply on the lives of the saints and the ways in which those lives provide guidance to our own callings in life?
Apringius of Beja writes: “The Lord gives witness to himself, for the multitude of the saints will become his temple, so that he might dwell with them forever and that he might be their Lord and they might be his people.” (Ancient Christian Commentary, Revelation, pg. 356)
We may wonder about this temple, for it is one that is soaked in blood. Many saints were martyrs and were killed in ways that truly plumb the darkest depths of human creativity. We think of the saints occupying this higher level of human existence, but if we follow them to this higher plane, we might fear finding a dying, mutilated body, rather than some kind of beautiful transcendence.
The reality is that the way of the saints is the way of Jesus and all roads must lead up to Calvary. Sometimes we are just bearing witness at the foot of the cross, and sometimes we are put to death beside him — and we may not know our place until we get there.
We are in the middle of the Triduum. On Calvary, we are perhaps at our highest point physically and our lowest point emotionally. We grieve for these martyred saints, but we know that on the other side, we will rejoice with them as well. For, through the resurrection, it is with their beautiful marked and alive bodies that the Lord is building his holy temple. The saints marched up to Calvary in the hope of that divine revelation and may we follow their example, wherever it may lead.
Sarah Cornwell is a laywoman and an associate of the Eastern Province of the Community of St. Mary. She and her husband have seven children and they live in Wheaton, Illinois.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Diocese of Karnataka South – The Church of South India (United)
Church of St. Mark, Brooklyn, New York
