Oh when the
saints go marchin’ in . . .
by Mike Oettle
ALL SAINTS (1 November) is one of the great festivals of the Christian Church – which is perhaps strange, seeing that the day doesn’t belong to just one saint, but every last one of them. In a way it’s an underlining of the universality of God’s Church.
So what is
a saint, then? Let’s go back to basics. The word comes to us from the Latin sanctus, meaning sacred, which derives from a verb meaning to sanctify or consecrate. It was used in the Latin Bible to translate the Greek hagios, which means holy or sacred.[1]
The New Testament designates all believers as saints because they are by
position holy and set apart to God. Paul writes “to all who are beloved of God
in Rome, called as saints”, and in closing the letter to the Philippians he
says: “Greet every saint in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 1:7, Philippians 4:21)
The word holy gives us another clue. Indeed, this word (in Old English, halig) and others related to it are so full of meaning that the early missionaries to the Anglo-Saxons made a great deal of use of them in proclaiming the Gospel. It is very close in meaning to both “whole” and “hale” (healthy or robust), and from it were derived the Old English words halga (holy man), halge (holy woman) and halgian (to make holy, or consecrate). Sadly, the words halga and halge have disappeared from the language, leaving just a few echoes, one of them the old name for All Saintstide: All Hallows – and following from this, the day before or Eve of All Hallows: All-Hallow-Even, or Hallow-e’en for short.[2]
Why do we celebrate All Saints? Well, for one thing, there are far too many especially holy people in the Church's history for them each to be accommodated on one of the 365 days of the year, and for another we need to be reminded of the communion of saints, which includes the living saints on earth and those who
have, as the Salvation Army puts it, been promoted to higher service. Various
early churches celebrated a feast of all the saints or at least of all the
martyrs, on different dates, and during the 4th century AD the Eastern Church
began the general observance of a feast of all martyrs on 13 May. This date was
picked up by Pope Boniface IV in 609 when he dedicated Rome’s old Pantheon –
originally a temple dedicated to all gods – as a church in honour of the
Blessed Virgin and all martyrs. Pope Gregory III (731-741) is supposed to have
been the one who shifted the date to 1 November and expanded the festival to
commemorate all saints; he dedicated a chapel in St Peter’s, Rome, to all
the saints on this day. In 837 Pope Gregory IV ordered the general observance
of All Saints Day on 1 November.
Exactly why the Church chose to observe All Saints in November is not clear, but it served the purpose in mediæval Britain of providing a Christian focus for end-of-October celebrations, for the last day of October (Halloween) was a most important day in the pagan Celtic calendar. Called Samhain, or Summer’s End, it also marked the end of the Celtic year.
Samhain and Halloween are rich in symbolism – both good and evil – which is important for Christians to understand. For a discussion of Halloween, go here.
