The Saints Go Marching In

We are trave'ling in the footsteps
Of those who've gone before,
And we'll all be reunited,
On a new and sunlit shore

Chorus

Oh, when the saints go marching in
Oh, when the saints go marching in
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in

And when the sun refuse to shine
And when the sun refuse to shine
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the sun refuse to shine

And when the moon turns red with blood
And when the moon turns red with blood
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the moon turns red with blood

Oh, when the trumpet sounds its call
Oh, when the trumpet sounds its call
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the trumpet sounds its call

Some say this world of trouble,
Is the only one we need,
But I'm waiting for that morning,
When the new world is revealed.

(Traditional. American Gospel Hymn.)

The Sunday of All Saints

The Orthodox Church celebrates the feast of All Saints on the Sunday following Pentecost/Trinity Sunday. In the West, All Saints is celebrated on November 1.

Earlier the Roman Church celebrated the feast on May 13. The reason is that on May 13, 609 Pope Boniface IV consecrated the pagan temple to all the gods, the Pantheon (which had been given to him as a gift by the Byzantine Emperor, Phocas) to the Virgin Mary and All the Martyrs. (There is an unlikely story that for the consecration Boniface had 28 wagonloads of bones of martyrs brought from the catacombs!)

The change to November 1 in the eighth century seems to derive from the dedication of a chapel in St Peter's by Pope Gregory III to all saints, not just the martyrs.

However, there are those who think the change had more to do with a desire to counteract the revels of the pagan Celtic feast of Samain, the Calends of Winter. If so, it had little long-term success as the pagan celebration of Halloween (= All Hallows Eve, All Hallows being an old English name for All Saints) goes from strength to strength. Though today it is small children dressed up as witches and warlocks demanding "trick or treat" who menace the neighbourhood rather than real-life witches and warlocks.

The celebration of the feast on the Sunday after Pentecost is recorded as early as St John Chrysostom as being the practice of the Church of Antioch.

The reason we celebrate All Saints on this Sunday is that following the feast of Pentecost/Trinity, the eighth and final Sunday (indeed day) of Pascha, the Church returns us from the Paschal anticipation of eternity we have been enjoying since Easter Sunday to ordinary work-a-day time. (The actual dramatic liturgical transition occurs during the Service of Kneeling, Vespers.)

As, like the Apostles, we prepare ourselves for our apostolic mission to the fallen world, the Church places before us the example of the saints to encourage and guide us.

On the Sunday of All Saints the Church joyfully commemorates all saints whether known or unknown, whether past, present or future.

Technically, from the perspective of canon law, a saint is a person for whom a feast day has been entered onto the Church calendar, the process known as canonisation. The Roman Catholic Church has a cumbersome centralised system of canonisation, but in the East the process is more flexible and is undertaken by the various national Churches.

But, there are literally millions of individuals not on the calendar who over the centuries have lived outstandingly holy lives or have died as martyrs. In fact, the number of Orthodox martyrs of the twentieth century runs into the millions; more than all previous centuries added together. Each and every one of these individuals is deserving of a place on the calendar and so, in a more general sense, can be regarded as a saint.

The feast of All Saints is not only a commemoration of saints long dead but of all the saints throughout time, from the origins of humanity to the consummation of the age and the Second Coming of Christ.

There are innumerable living saints, individuals whose burning love of God and of their neighbour render them every bit as worthy exemplars of the Christian life as the saints on the calendar. And, of course, there are still Christians suffering imprisonment and torture, even death, as a consequence of their witness to Christ.

In fact, the feast of All Saints does not only commemorate those we would call "Christians". It commemorates all those who, whatever their time, place and "religion", have lived their lives guided by the light of the Logos (= Christ) within them. For the Logos, through whom all things are created, has been present in the world and in human hearts since the beginning of time, aeons before the Incarnation.

Orthodoxy takes a universalistic view of the Church. The Church of the New Testament is historically continuous with that of the Old. The Old Testament is the New in shadow, the New the Old in its fulfilment in the God-man, Jesus Christ. Through the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery of the Lord the whole of time, past, present and future, is rolled up like a scroll into the eternal present of God.

Time and Eternity

There is a strong eschatological (= appertaining to the last things, the final destination) element to the feast of All Saints. The Church focuses on the consummation of that to which it aspires, the drawing of all humanity, indeed all creation, back into God from whence it came.

We are all called to be saints, to transcend the barrier of separation between the Church struggling here on earth, "the Church Militant", and the Communion of Saints in Heaven, "the Church Triumphant".

The Church, on this great feast, therefore commemorates not only all the saints of the past and the living saints but also those saints yet to be born. She looks towards the completion of the span of history when time will be no more.

This strongly eschatological understanding of the Communion of Saints is captured in the Gospel hymn associated with the "Dixieland" tradition of New Orleans, "When the Saints Go Marching In".

Most people are only aware of its secular rendition, in which usually only the chorus is sung (endlessly!). In fact, it is a deeply spiritual hymn, rich in the metaphorical language of biblical eschatology, particularly the book of Revelation. The hymn gives vivid expression to the hope that we all might be "in that number when the Saints go marching in" to the New Jerusalem.

In the New Orleans tradition, the hymn is sung at funerals. It is sung sombrely as a dirge processing to the interment, while on the return it is sung joyfully in its more familiar "hot" version.

The Cultus of the Martyrs

At this juncture, let us switch texts:

Throughout the world, thy Church, O Christ our God, is adorned with the blood of thy Martyrs as with purple and fine linen. Through them she cries to thee: send down thy pity upon thy people, to thy community give peace, and shed on our souls thy great mercy.

(Dismissal Hymn (aplytikion/troparion) for the Sunday of All Saints.)

The dismissal hymn for All Saints will be familiar to most readers. But have you ever noticed something odd about it? It commemorates only martyrs, not all the saints. Vast numbers of saints whose names appear on the calendar did not die a martyr's death. So what is going on here? We must turn to history for an answer.

The Church calendar began its development immediately following the Resurrection. Christ rose from the dead on a Sunday. It was natural, therefore, that Christians should gather for their regular weekly celebration of the Eucharist on Sunday, the Lord's Day.

Christ's death and Resurrection occurred at the time of the Jewish Passover. The descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles occurred at the Jewish feast of Pentecost, 50 days after Passover. The Church from the beginning in keeping the Jewish feasts of Passover and Pentecost would have understood the festivals in the light of the saving mysteries of the Lord.

Although confusion was to arise as a consequence of conflicting traditions, the Paschal cycle, which encompasses not only Pascha but also every Sunday of the year, is of Apostolic origin. Astronomically, the Paschal cycle is determined not just by the sun, as is the case with our civil calendar, but by the phases of the moon as well.

So early on the Church knew only one annual cycle of festivals, the Paschal cycle. The origin of the fixed feast cycle (those festivals kept on the same calendar date each year) lies with the veneration of the martyrs.

It was the heroic witness of Christians whose bodies were used as torches to illuminate the night by Nero or who were torn apart by wild beasts in the arena that secured the success of the Church's mission to: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation (Mark 16:15)."

If the mission of the Early Church had not been nourished by the blood of the martyrs (the word literally means "witness") the conversion of the Empire might not have occurred. Christianity might then have gone down in history as just another mystery religion, along with those of Isis, Mithras, Dionysus and the rest.

In the New Testament the word "saint" is used of all baptised Christians, the Holy people of God. But with the tortures and hideous deaths of Christians during the persecutions of the first centuries the denotation shifted.

The word came to be restricted to those who had suffered death for Christ. The "passion" of the martyr imitated the Passion of Christ. So close to the Saviour, the martyrs were seen as powerful intercessors on behalf of the faithful.

Local churches started to keep lists of their martyrs, recording the day of their deaths on the civil calendar. The day of a martyr's death was called their dies natalis or natale (= birthday), denoting their translation into Heaven, not their physical birth.

By the second century we find evidence of the development of a definite cultus of the martyrs, at first purely local. The community would gather at the tomb of a martyr or martyrs on their dies natalis and there celebrate a ceremonial meal, known as the Refrigerium, in their memory. (The Refrigerium, the ancestor of the Memorial Service with kollyva that Orthodox still celebrate, was also celebrated by family and friends for those who had died natural deaths.)

A small building might be constructed over a tomb for the holding of the Refrigerium. Later, in the fourth century, a basilica might be built over, or beside, a sacred site or tomb of a martyr, providing a place where pilgrims could gather. Christians had a strong desire to be buried as close to the martyrs as possible. The whole cluster of graves might then be enclosed within a building, creating a coemeterium subteglata (= roofed cemetery).

These basilican structures were not designed as churches for the celebration of the Eucharist but for the veneration of the remains of martyrs, or for the honouring of sacred sites, and the celebration of the Refrigerium. It would seem that Constantinian basilicas, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem and St Peter's, Rome, were in fact originally buildings of this kind, although all evolved into churches.

The commemoration of the dead and the Eucharistic worship of the Church rapidly combined during the course of the fourth century and the Eucharist came to be celebrated over the remains of martyrs; so much so, that it came to be accepted that the Liturgy should be celebrated over relics. (This is still the case today as relics are enshrined beneath the Holy Table at a church's consecration and sown into the antimension, the cloth on which the Eucharistic offerings are placed.)

Originally local, the cultus of martyrs spread to other communities which added the names to their own calendars. This dissemination was assisted by the growing practice of dividing and distributing the mortal remains of martyrs.

Eventually, many renowned martyrs came to be commemorated, usually on their natale, universally. A fixed feast cycle was in the making. This development opened the door to the creation of feasts of Our Lord outside of the Paschal cycle and, somewhat later, feasts of the Theotokos.

While all of this was going on, the concept of martyrdom itself was expanding, and went on expanding and expanding. First it was extended to cover not only those who literally gave their lives but those who underwent torture, imprisonment and exile for the sake of the Lord; the Confessors.

Then, with the end of bloody persecution in the fourth century and the rise of monasticism, the concept was extended to cover holy ascetics, whose tears shed for their own sins and those of the world, it was said, corresponded to the drops of blood shed by the martyrs.

The fasting, vigils and unceasing prayer of those who died to the world came to be thought of as "white" martyrdom, as opposed to the "red" martyrdom of those who actually shed their blood for Christ.

From then on it was open slather. The concept of martyrdom was extended to cover all those who had lived outstanding heroic lives of self-sacrifice and struggle in the name of Christ. And, of course, as we have seen, the Church on the Sunday of All Saints does not commemorate only those whose names are entered on the calendar. She also honours all who have led their lives guided by the inner light of the Logos before the Incarnation, all living saints, and those as yet unborn.

* Guy Freeland teaches Hermeneutics and aspects of Liturgical Studies at St Andrew's Greek Orthodox Theological College, Sydney.

This article first appeared in the Greek Australian Vema June 2008.