All Saints’ Sunday: Christ in Me

All Saints, 2024

Once upon a time at the very beginning of the 20th century, there were two young Parisian students. One was called Jacques Maritain, and his girlfriend was called Raïssa. Raïssa was a poet. Jacques Maritain was a student of philosophy. They were agnostics, more or less, and they decided that life was meaningless. One day in the Luxembourg Garden in Paris, they made a vow, and they said unless we can discover by the end of the meaning of life by the end of this academic year we will commit suicide. Maybe that’s the kind of thing young French students say.

While they were waiting for the summer term to come to an end, Jacques Maritain found a book by a writer called Léon Bloy. Léon Bloy said, ‘There’s only one real sadness in life, not to be a saint.’ … That had a huge impact on young Jacques Maritain. Bloy was implying that there are all kinds of sadness. I didn’t get the success I wanted, or the wealth and recognition, I didn’t achieve this and that, there’s all kinds of sadness; but they don’t matter. At the end of the day, there’s only one real sadness; not to become a saint — not to become the person that Christ wants you to be.

Once you get that your whole life changes. Your whole attitude changes: because most of us spend most of our time fussing about trivia. It might be trivia like becoming a millionaire but from a spiritual standpoint it’s still trivia. Becoming a millionaire is trivial if you accomplish that and don’t become a saint. The only real sadness, the only real failure is not to become a saint. That idea woke Jacques Maritain up. He and his girlfriend didn’t commit suicide. They got married and they became saints. I remember them as we keep the Feast of All Saints.

So what is it to be a saint? One way to answer is simply to say that being a saint means being a friend of Jesus Christ. Becoming a saint means becoming Christ’s friend. Or to put it another way, being a saint means allowing Christ to live His life in you. St Paul says, it’s no longer I who live but Christ who lives His life in me. (Gal. 2:20). That’s what it means to be a saint. Jesus is Lord! Being a saint means allowing Jesus to dominate your life, and every aspect of your life. It means letting Him be Lord of your life, dominus in Latin just means Lord. A saint is someone for whom Jesus is the Lord of his or her whole life.

Now that might sound a little bit oppressive. I have surrendered my life to God. Christ is living His life in me. What does that do to my life? Does it mean I’m nothing now? Does it mean that I myself am no longer really alive? No! When we surrender our lives to God, Who is the very ground of our being we find ourselves! If you read the letters of St Paul his personality is so evident on every page, his thinking, his passions, his emotions. Its all there, Paul is Paul. But, he says, its no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. The old self, which was focused on ego, and success, and money and power, can die because none of that matters any more. It is no longer I who live. Christ has become the Lord of my life. That is how Paul found his deepest self and how he discovered what it means to be a saint.

That means that the saints live in Holy Communion with Christ. This Holy Communion is the source of the strength and the joy of the saints. Someone told me last week about something they had just witnessed on the Tube. Two men were sitting opposite him. One of them began to have a seizure. The other held him gently and put him the recovery position until the seizure passed. The carer said that his friend had regular seizures ever since they had fought together as soldiers in the same regiment in [Afghanistan.] The friend had saved the carer’s life by pulling him out of a helicopter crash, but the friend received a head injury in the process. That’s what caused him to have his seizures now. So the carer now goes with the man wherever he needs to go to make sure that he is all right.

It reminded me of the story of two martyrs from the third century. The first saints were all martyrs. These martyrs were called Perpetua and Felicity and they were both young mums. Felicity actually gave birth when they were already in prison and awaiting execution by wild beasts in a Roman arena for the crime of being Christians. The jailors mocked Felicity when she cried out in pain as she gave birth to her child. They asked her, “How are you going to endure the beasts if you can’t even endure labour pains?” Felicity replied: “Now alone I suffer what I am suffering, but then there will be another within me, who will suffer for me, because I am going to suffer for Him.” She understood what Paul meant when he said, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” This is the way the saints live, this the way we can live.

DG Amen.

The Rev’d Dr James Lawson, St Mary Magdalene Enfield, 27/10/2024