ATTITUDES OF ALL SAINTS

It’s fascinating how the Lectionary places the Beatitudes at the Gospel center of All Saints. Here we find those who have opened their heart and hand, mouth and spirit, path and practice to the Kingdom of God. This does not mean that each saint carries these natures in equal proportion, but they embody a quality of mutuality and communion. Communion is the telos of the Beatitudes. Here is some imaginative playfulness with the Beatitudes, in light of All Saints:

Blessed are all whose poverty has rendered them poor in spirit. The justice, wholeness, and communal joy of the kingdom fills every room they cohabit.

Blessed are those who find themselves in mourning, lament, and grief. They’ll find solace in communion with others, and God in each other, which will hold and surround them like nothing else can.

Blessed are the vulnerably gentle, for they join all children in the earth - the earth that is not given by parents, but loaned by children.

Blessed are those who indomitably work for justice, for the restoration and restitution of all things, for they will commune in a life of mutual goodness and consummation.

Blessed are those who contend for the humanity of all people by offering inexhaustible compassion, for they themselves will commune in the kindness they fill the world with.

Blessed are those willing to stand in relation in to others and not dominate nor abandon. They will be the mystics, swept up in sheer communion, who see the triune God.

Blessed are the repairers of the breach, God sees them doing their work and claims them as God’s own.

Blessed are those who painfully bear witness to another world that displaces the status quo. They’ll drink the new wine they share.

Blessed are those who find the solidarity of Christ in suffering as they work to restore and re-imagine. With every lash, their love is incorporated into the blood of all the saints who have struggled in Love’s name. In the end, they overcome.