Welcome to Tuesday’s reflection.
Today I reflect on All Saints’ Day, the people who changed my understanding of holiness, and why sainthood may look rather more ordinary than we sometimes imagine.
I have always felt a bit conflicted when All Saints’ Day comes around in the church calendar.
Don’t get me wrong, the Church remembers some extraordinary people. Men and women who showed remarkable courage, lived sacrificially, endured persecution or helped shape Christian faith across generations. We name churches after them, paint them in windows and tell their stories long after almost everything else about their world has disappeared.
I value those stories enormously. Yet, I sometimes wonder whether we have made sainthood look so impressive that most of us just assume it belongs to somebody else.
When I think about the people who have most shaped my understanding of faith, surprisingly few of them fit that traditional picture of a saint. They were not theologians, famous Christians or people whose lives will ever be written about.
In fact, some of them came through our parish food bank.
