Saints - Past, Present & Future
Today as we celebrate All Saints Day our readings naturally concentrate on God’s love, his grace, on the many blessings that he gives to us every day, and ultimately upon the victory which he has already won – the incredible victory over everything that is wrong in the world and in our lives today. In the reading from Wisdom (3:1-9) we are given a picture of that victory – the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God where no torment can ever touch them... And there’s a similar feeling in the reading from the Book of Revelation (21:1-5). The reading from there tells of the new Jerusalem, a city fit for God to live in, a city where mourning and crying and pain are no more. And then in the gospel of John (11:32-44) we have the account of Jesus weeping as he hears of the death of his friend Lazarus, but then performing the miracle of raising him from the dead. These three readings are useful tools as we think of All Saints Day, because I think there are 3 elements to the day – the f