If there is one thing writ large in the lives of the saints it is that they came to know their need of God. Here is the very heart of the matter – not only for them, but also for us – for Christians in every age – a recognition of our deep need of God. “Like as the hart desireth the water brook; so longeth my soul after thee O God”.
In a world of fragmentation and increasing confrontation; where confusions and anxieties abound; and where there is much fear about the future – where is it all going? where surfers and seekers abound; here in the lives of the saints we have sure signposts for the Church in the present and into the future. True enough, they speak to us from the past; not, though, a past which is over and done with. It was the Tractarian revival of an understanding of the Church – not as arm of the State, not simply one organisation or institution among others, but rather the Church as a divine society – encompassing, embracing the whole company of the faithful in heaven and on earth, where life today is to be lived and understood in the context of life eternal; a larger, more inclusive, catholic vision, which in drawing out the past into the present gives us the courage and the confidence to move ahead into the future.
Here in the saints is no roll call of past heroes. Rather they are our sisters and brothers; they are with us on the way – alongside us as companions and guides, sustaining us with their prayers and guiding us by their example. And it is here in the celebration of these holy and awesome mysteries that in those words of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews “We stand before Mount Zion and the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, before myriads of angels, the full concourse and assembly of the first born citizens of heaven and God the judge of all…” What a contrast to that dull, pedestrian, committee-speak and committee-bound, utilitarian view of the Church which all too frequently I experience and which is hardly likely ever to inspire or convert anyone to anything.
We desperately need to recover this vision of the Church which is God’s and not ours…
—Then Archbishop of York David Hope, in a sermon on All Saints Day 1998