Rev. 7 * Matt. 5: 1-12
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
I recall my very first
solar eclipse, probably about 1961 or 1962, when I could not have been more
than four years old. I remember it well. My mother was very careful to tell me
not to look directly at the sun, because it was very possible that I could go
blind if I did. During a solar eclipse, we can look at the sun, not realizing
that the infrared rays are every bit as destructive to the optic nerve as ever.
Our eyes cannot take those rays in their full strength. So, I was told not to
look up when the sky would darken, but to look down and so preserve my
eyesight.
A cousin, who lived
across the street, came over with a cardboard box, that, if worn like a helmet
over the head, due to a hole cut in the back and a white sheet of paper as a
viewing screen placed in front, could be used to see the reflection of the
eclipse. It was a partial eclipse, and I recall that on the white screen I saw
the sun with a dark round shadow in front of it, causing the reflection of the
sun to appear like the moon, when it is only partly visible. The sun appeared
shaped like a quarter moon, reflected inside the box-helmet. Even more strange,
even before and after that contraption was on my head, on the ground a thousand
such reflections appeared, little quarter-moon images of the sun. We could not
look directly at the brightness of the sun with any safety, but we could look
at the endless reflections all over the ground. I have never seen that particular
effect from an eclipse on any other occasion since that day. But, I cannot
forget what it looked like.
That is an
illustration for us. In our condition as fallen creatures, subject in this
world to sin and death, we cannot not look upon the undiluted glory of God in
its perfection. It is not a danger, because it cannot happen; for if it
happened we would be unable to endure it. It is true that Christ said, “Whoever
has seen Me has seen the Father.” He accomplished this by His coming to us as a
man. Even on the Mount of Transfiguration it was His glory shining through the
safe filter of His humanity that shined with the brightness of the sun in its
strength. He made known His divine presence by everything He said and did,
especially by defeating death when in His resurrection He ushered in
immortality. But, never did He unleash on anyone a perfect glimpse of His
divine nature, for to do so would not have been merciful, but rather
terrifying. So, He took human nature in its fullness, and this became a part of
Him forever by a loving and gracious act of His will. Human nature served as
His icon, a perfect image of the Father for us to see. Similarly, His Presence
here today is very real, but made food for us under “these shadows mean” of
bread and wine.
We do hope to see God some day, and not only in the human nature taken
by the Son, though never will it be set aside; And whenever we see God we
cannot do so without seeing Christ Jesus, for the Trinity cannot be divided or
dissected. The goal and hope of Christians is to see God as our Lord Jesus
said: "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." This
one little line is the reason why this passage that opens the Sermon on the
Mount is the Gospel for the Feast of all Saints. The Church long has used the
word “saints” to speak of those we believe to have entered already into the
perfect state that allows them to be granted the Beatific Vision. Its popular usage, though not its Biblical meaning, has become
limited, over time, to speak of the Church Triumphant: That is, to see God as
God, the final perfect destiny of the human creature by grace.
Because we are not
ready for the Beatific Vision, we must, for now, see God the way I saw the sun
during the solar eclipse in my childhood. What we see, that is the sight of God
in Jesus Christ, is real. And, real also is what you see when I hold the
Sacrament up and tell you to Behold the Lamb of God. We see that reality in a
way given to us by God’s love, because He saves us by showing Himself. Jesus
said to Nicodemus:
“And
as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man
be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have
eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the
world through him might be saved (John 3:15-17).”
We see Him in His
human nature, lifted up on the cross. We see Him as the Lamb of God, ourselves
not worthy that He should come under our roof, but asking that He speak the
word only, and our souls shall be healed. Yes, what we see is real. And, what
we see is granted to us in a way that saves us rather than destroying us, for
He came to save us. Our sinfulness, our weakness and our foolishness is all
taken into account by the Father, and so what remains hidden for now is due to
His mercy. The fullness of Godhead dwells in Christ bodily, and the Holy Spirit
is really and truly present within the Church- within us with all His gifts.
But, our destiny is to behold the sun in its strength when our eyes are made
able to endure the brightness, able to endure seeing God as God. We are meant
to know Him as He is, to behold throughout eternity the Beatific Vision, a
vision not stagnant because He is infinite, and our knowledge of Him will be
ever perfected more and more, endless knowledge, joy and love.
Yet, we must never
presume on God’s grace. Hell is the denial of this joy; not that God denies it
to us, but that we deny it to ourselves unless and until His work is perfected.
Think of the words we
call the Summary of the Law. The
first and great commandment is the impossible call to be saints, to love the
Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, and then to
love your neighbor as yourself. When you look at the Epistles of Saint Paul, in
the opening of the Epistle to the Romans and the first Epistle to the
Corinthians, you see that all of the people who belong to the Christ’s Body,
the Church, are “called to be saints.”
I like the King James
Bible, with that accurate translation “called to be saints.” That “called to
be” part is missing from the understanding of a good many Protestant
revivalists, fundamentalists and Pentecostals. They teach that every Christian
is a saint just by, as they like to say, “accepting Jesus.” Meanwhile, the
opposite error belongs to those who seem to think of saints as if they were
comic book superheroes, people with special abilities like Superman born on
Krypton, or Spiderman with his radioactive bug bite that enables him to do
amazing things. We mere mortals cannot be like them, and it’s best just to be
normal.
Well, the truth is
that a saint is a holy person. That is what the word means. And, the truth is
that everyone who belongs to Christ has the vocation to be a saint. We have not
yet arrived at being perfected as saints, but neither are we supposed to leave
that to a special class of superheroes. The scripture commands us to “follow on
to know the Lord (Hosea 6:3).” As you read the word “saints” in the Bible, it
is not limited to the Church Triumphant. In fact, it includes you and me in the
here and now of this life; we were set apart, sanctified to God, by our baptism.
So, in one sense we are already saints, that is, each of us is a holy person;
in the other sense, that of vocation, we are called to become holy, called to
be saints, by the continued work of the Holy Spirit through cooperating actively with His grace. That is the
meaning of the sixth chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.
The most important
thing that we Anglicans focus on during the Feast of All Saints is not the
issue of devotions to the saints. Sure, it is possible, I suppose, to slip into
idolatry and to worship saints and angels- and some people have. But, that is
not a likely error for most Anglicans. I think we all know that only God is to
be worshiped as God. The ancient practice of asking the saints to pray for us
is not idolatry, and should not be condemned as if it were. I can make no
guarantee that they have a more than merely human capacity to hear everyone,
for that would indicate that they somehow shared the Divine attribute of
omnipresence (which they simply cannot). I cannot place my faith in any one of
them that way. But, I know that they must be praying for the Church Militant.
For they have are ever perfected in charity.
The subject of devotions
to saints is not our focus on the feast of All Saints. Our focus has always
been the call that God has given to all of us, the call to become, by grace,
saints ourselves in how we live. That is, we are called to be holy, to be
faithful in every area of our lives, to press on to know the Lord, to confess
the sins we fall into and repent of them in order to be forgiven, and also to
be cleansed and delivered from the power of sin. We are called to develop the
virtues, faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice, prudence and temperance.
Above all of the others charity, the bond of perfection.
In order to begin to
answer the call to holiness, we must be thankful. And, that is the best reason
to look at the Lord Jesus as the Lamb of God, lifted up on the cross as Moses
lifted the serpent on the pole in the wilderness. It is in thanksgiving that
our hearts begin to render for Christ’s great act of love, that our souls are
healed, not treating us as our sins deserve, but rather dying as our atonement.
In that love we begin to see the reflection of Divine glory. Like that
reflection I saw as a child, wearing a box as a helmet on my head, we see the
glory of God the way I saw a projection of the sun. And like the innumerable
reflections of the partial sun that I saw across the ground, we see radiant
glory in the great company of saints, some here as well as those who have gone
before, those with hearts made pure by grace to behold the glory of God.
