“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!”
These words come from William Wordsworth, one of
In this poem, Wordsworth ponders the great circular journey of our lives, this journey which begins and ends in God.
And our liturgy today lays out that circular journey that we travel through our lives.
Today, we welcome the newest member of our St Peter’s family, Alexander Long, through the sacrament of Holy Baptism, a joyous occasion.
Alex’s baptism is a reminder to us Christians that God is our companion on our journeys through life. The Sacrament of Holy Baptism reminds us of this fact.
Baptism is the outward reminder that our journeys begin and end in God. In every moment of our journeys, God journeys with us and longs to make us new people.
If we walk with God, our journeys through this life become journeys of transformation–
Because God is longing to bring us into new life.
And so, in the waters of baptism, we are buried with Christ in his death.
In the waters of baptism, we share in his resurrection.
And, in the waters of baptism, we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.
This rebirth through the Holy Spirit gives us the longing to walk with God and to become a new people.
But our journeys can be hard, and throughout our lives, we are tempted to seek easier ways that ultimately turn out to be the old pathways of destruction.
So the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon reminds us that we need some provisions for our journeys.
Our first provision is trust in God. When we trust in God, we are more likely to understand God’s truth. We will want to seek God’s guidance and direction for us, rather than blindly to follow our own truths, which may lead us astray.
Our second provision is faith. Faith in God is a gift that gives us the longing to abide with God and with one another in love in our journeys through this life.
To go along with our trust and our faith, God gives us two more provisions like the manna from heaven that the Israelites ate in the wilderness, new every morning—God pours grace and mercy out on us.
And God walks with us, and watches over us.
Trust in God, faith in God, God’s grace and God’s mercy—our baptisms remind us that God has given us these gifts, gifts that we will need for the journey—the gifts that we need to become the new people of God.
And today, on All Saints’ Sunday, in addition to celebrating the baptism of Alex, we also remember those who have passed through the grave and gate of death into their joyful resurrection, who have entered into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of the saints, who have returned to the arms of our merciful and loving God.
The lives of those we have lost have been changed, not ended.
Increasing in the knowledge and love of God , they are now going from strength to strength in lives of now perfect service in that land of light and joy into which they have entered.
James Wallace, a Catholic theologian, has this to say about the saints.
The saints beckon us toward our own futures.
The saints help us keep an eye on our destination—God’s heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, a city in which Jesus is the light, a city whose gates are always open, a city in which the river of the water of life—the waters of our baptism, healing and life giving waters– flow from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
This heavenly city is our future—but we catch tantalizing glimpses of it along the way.
We will catch a glimpse of city’s river of the water of life, bright as crystal, when the waters of baptism are poured into our baptismal font today and these same baptismal waters wash over Alex.
And the Lamb’s light, which is the light of the city of
Even though death ends our earthly journeys together, death cannot end our walk with those we love. The faithful who have gone before us continue to be our companions in hope.
Because the souls of the saints are in the hands of God, we have hope that we, still in our mortal bodies, are also in God’s hands, even now.
The saints are at peace, and we feel hints of that peace when we hope in God for that peace that passes all human understanding, the peace that keeps our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
We know that the saints have passed through the gate of death and into their joyful resurrection. They have been made new for eternity.
And as God walks with us from the beginning to the end of our earthly journeys, we know that on this journey, God longs to make us new as well–filling us full of trust and faith through God’s grace and mercy. God longs to make us a new people.
Because God is walking with us and making us new, we haven’t forgotten. We are constantly catching glimpses of our destination.
Even now, if we look, we can see that God has wrapped us in those same clouds of heavenly glory that trailed us at our births, when we came to this earth from the one who is seated on the throne– God– our beginning, and our end, our Alpha and our Omega, and our eternal home.
Amen.
Resources:
William Wordsworth, “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.”
James A. Wallace,C. Ss. R., Preaching to the Hungers of the Heart: The Homily on the Feasts and within the Rites. The Liturgical Press,