The will in people to survive is strong.
Last Thursday during my weekly night-walk in the Tenderloin, I stopped in a dive bar on my route to see if I knew anybody, and for a cup of good cheer. It was Halloween month, and the TV in the corner had on a slasher movie – not my genre. I couldn’t help but watch. I won’t disgust you with the details. The few scenes I saw followed what I surmise is a common trope of the craft: a nubile and bloodied young woman running for her life from a deranged clown hell-bent to do her in. We in the dive, patrons and bartender alike, couldn’t look away from the gore. I’ve never been more grateful for a commercial break. I bid everyone a safe night and left that horrible fantasy on screen for the grim reality of the street.
Addicts shooting up, lighting up, bent double, nodded off. Their dealers hovering nearby, vigilant, like fallen guardian angels. Living bodies lay strewn on sidewalks: amputees and aimless and addled alike. And yet the will to survive is strong.
People carry Narcan to revive the near-dead overdosed. People look out for each other to defend against unexpected harm. People reach out to the passing priest – capped, collared, and cassocked – for a blessing and acceptance, for comfort and hope … and maybe for a cigarette.
The will to survive is strong. Often this will is described in martial, war-like terms. Scan any obituary page and you’ll see notices like, “She battled cancer courageously for many years,” or “He fought bravely against a cruel disease.” Those living with chronic illnesses many times depict life as “a constant struggle.”
At military medaling ceremonies, stories of a soldier’s great bravery amid impossible odds testify to this strong will to survive and the heroic ends they took to defend themselves and their friends against near-certain death.
Perhaps even you have had to fight for your life. You’ve beaten cancer. You’ve fought with an attacker. You’ve summoned the will not to do yourself in when there seems no other way to end your pain. Whether it’s the bleakness of the streets or the barrenness of our hearts, the will to survive is strong and most of us will make it to the very end.
And then there are all the saints, the heroic yet ordinary people we hold, by the consensus of the Church, as holy role models of the Christian faith, who tempered their will to survive in this life with their hope in the promise of eternal life with Christ in the next.
Saints who gave their lives so that others might live. Saints who gladly went to the gallows because of their faith in Jesus Christ. Saints who preached and pastored prophetically and thus met the slanderer’s scorn or the assassin’s blade or bullet. Saints who turned their backs on earthly riches and creature comforts to live in simplicity and poverty. Saints who risked contagion and exhaustion to care for the sick and the dying. Saints who wrestled with the demons of distraction and doubt to pray constantly.
All this is not to say that the saints were super-human. In their triumphs, each of them faced real-time, real-human conflicts. Saint Paul once wrote that he was conflicted: he would prefer to die to be with Christ in heaven, yet he also wanted to live to preach the gospel. In the moment, Paul wasn’t sure which was better.
Howard and Margaret, my parents, less saintly than Paul, but equally as ornery and just as stubborn, and to the vexation of my brothers and sisters, delayed or declined routine medical care. Their goal was to be in heaven with Jesus; and while they wouldn’t do anything to hasten their demise, they wouldn’t do anything to prolong it, either. Jesus, as usual, got the last laugh by making them wait. Dad died at 87 and mom made it to 92.
Along with Howard and Margaret are you and me. None of us is super-human. Each of us is conflicted. It’s likely we won’t be assigned a date on the sanctoral calendar or have a church named after us. And yet, in the words of a hymn beloved by many for this All Saints’ Day feast, “there’s not any reason, no, not the least, why I shouldn’t be one too.”
Of course, in one important sense, we are surely saints already. We the living are saints – lower-case: members of the Church Militant – that is here to fight the good fight and keep the faith on Earth. The dead are members of the Church Triumphant, shining forth in heaven, running like sparks through stubble, where death and mourning and crying and pain are no more. We remember our own beloved dead, the lower-case saints, on All Souls’ Day. We celebrate the heroes we hold in common, the upper-case Saints’ today.
And we are called, as members of the Church Militant, the Body of Christ on Earth, to be like those saints who populate our calendars and devotionals, adorn our walls and windows, and name our churches and cities.
One opportunity to be saintly is before us. Election Day is Tuesday. Your candidates and your party may win. Or they may lose. How will you respond?
If your people win, will you temper your celebration with charity, humility, and grace? Will you resist the impulse to insult – overtly or in your heart – the people who voted another way? Will you work for understanding and reconciliation with those in your lives for whom politics has caused estrangement? Will you pray for your opponents? And for yourself?
And what if your people lose? Will you overcome the urge to lash out in an unproductive anger that hardens your heart? Will you wade out of the quicksand of fear and despair that saps you of hope? Will you seek outlets of activism and resistance whose fruits are those of the Holy Spirit, namely love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Will you pray for your opponents? And for yourself?
Nobody said sainthood is easy.
Yet if we are to survive in this life, and come to those ineffable joys of the next, then our will must be strong. Running from a scary clown on Halloween strong. And stronger, still. Then, God helping, we will be saints, too.
Fr. Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP
All Saints’ Sunday B – November 3, 2024
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco
“Of Saints and Scary Clowns”
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