On Saintly Remembrance

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. (Ps 116:15)

In a culture devoid of martyrdom, the ancient and medieval “cult of saints” can appear to be a strange and superstitious practice. We in the Christian (or post-Christian) West have not undergone the fires of persecution, and a “Christian death” is something normally undergone in relative peace. Even the case of fatal disease is a far cry from the dismemberment of the Coliseum. 

Yet the idea of celebrating or commemorating the death of an important person is not as foreign as we might think.^a Indeed, in our American “civil religion,” there are “saints days”: for Columbus, Martin Luther King Jr., and so forth. As someone has said (the reference of which escapes me), after the Civil War, Memorial Day became a sort of civic “All Saints’ Day.” Yet the commemoration of Christian saints has been largely lost among Protestants. 

To be sure, many abuses took place which need not be catalogued now. It was said that discontented wives could make an offering at a statue of St. Wilgerfort, housed in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and find their husbands eliminated.^b The Reformers, therefore, saw the invocation of saints as robbing Christ of His work. Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses on October 31, 1517, was no accident. It was the eve of All Saints’ Day, and the Castle Church on which the Theses were posted housed many relics of saints which were to be displayed the next day. Further, the Theses railed against the abuse of indulgences, which were tied to the dead—indulgences had the power, people were taught, to release the souls of the departed from purgatory.^c

Five hundred years have passed, however, and just as we lack many (or any) real martyrs these days, we also lack the same widespread abuses of the “cult of saints” today. Perhaps something should be salvaged from the practice of commemorating the saints, even among Protestants.

Picture yourself as a first or second century Christian. Your life as a Christian is marked by heavy persecution, not of de-platforming or of online verbal abuse, but of literal death in gruesome ways. You have no idea how long you’ll last. Your most outspoken leaders and spiritual directors have been burned, impaled, crucified, and eaten by lions. You may well follow them in similar ways soon. How will you gain the strength to remain steadfast in the faith, even with the point of the sword aimed at your heart? 

The earliest Christians, because of the commonality of martyrdom in the first two or three centuries, saw Christian discipleship as primarily found in martyrdom, in what was seen as a “literal ‘imitation of Christ.’”^d One way the earliest Christians were strengthened for lives of faith was by remembering the faithfulness of others who had borne witness (“martyr” literally means witness) even unto death. And not just the remembering of “calling it to mind” at random times, but by marking the date of their death with celebration.

We find just this thing happening very early. The ancient text, The Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, tells the story of Polycarp’s incarceration and ultimately his death, including his famous cry of “Away with the atheists,” turning the Roman charge of “atheism” back on them. But the text is a letter from the church at Smyrna, and the author writes that after Polycarp’s death,

“we took up his bones, more valuable than precious stones and finer than gold, and put them in a proper place. There, as far as we were able, the Lord will permit us to meet together in gladness and joy and to celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom, both in memory of those who fought the fight and for the training and preparation of those who will fight.”^e

Notice that Polycarp’s body was treated reverently for, as St. Augustine says, the body pertains not to ornament or aid which is applied from without, “but to the very nature of man.”^f The body was not to be thrown off as useless, but in hope of resurrection was kept and buried. 

But Polycarp’s body was not the only thing that remained of him. Each year, on the anniversary of his death (February 22, from what we can tell), the Smyrnan church would rejoice with gladness together, giving thanks for Polycarp’s faithful witness, and preparing themselves to do the same if called upon. The day was called his “birthday,” because it was his “heavenly birthday” (what was later known as a martyr’s natale or dies natalis). It was day on which he entered the presence of the Triune God. And is that not the hope and goal of Christians, to enter the same?

The earliest Christians began commemorating and celebrating their martyrs because it is “the desire of the local community for a concrete point of entry into the mystery of Christ,” and thus the whole community celebrated “the mystery of Christ manifest” in each of these faithful witnesses (martyrs), to whom they could relate directly since they knew them personally.^g And so, just as early as any official celebrations of Christmas or Easter, Christians were celebrating saints’ days, something historian Peter Brown calls a “basic, rather than peripheral, expression of Christian faith and piety.”^h Put simply, because most early Christians knew martyrs, and their communities had had martyrs, the commemoration of their lives and faithful deaths were at least as common as the commemoration of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

Again, put yourself in their position: is it any surprise? No one I know who has lost a dear, close loved one passes the anniversary of their death without at least a fleeting thought, if not more. One family I know lost their daughter to cancer, soon after she graduated college, and they have dinner together at one of her favorite restaurants every year on the day she died (or as close as possible). I’m sure anyone reading this has similar stories. Now imagine living in a situation where you’re worshiping beside a friend in church on Sunday, and the following week she’s being dragged into the arena and beheaded for being a Christian. Imagine your pastor being snatched mid-homily and burned in the town square the next day. These momentous events shaped the lives of these communities, and commemorating these martyrs’ “heavenly birthdays” each year was as natural as the ground they stood on. 

Such was the life of the early Christians. Witness the words of Ignatius of Antioch in the early second century, who led the way for the ordinary Christian to go boldly to death: 

“Suffer me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of God. Rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become my tomb, and may leave nothing of my body; so that when I have fallen asleep [in death], I may not be found troublesome to any one. Then shall I be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world shall not see so much as my body. Entreat the Lord for me, that by these instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God.”ⁱ

These martyrs were the “saints” of the early centuries. But by the fourth century and after, the category of “saint” was expanded to include others: such as “confessors” first (those who had been imprisoned and tortured for the faith, but not killed), but later ascetics, and monks, came to be considered “martyrs by extension” through “giving up their lives,” as it were, for Christ. Persecution had all but ended, so becoming a martyr by physically shedding one’s blood had reached obsolescence. But by other means, one could be a “martyr,” and be considered a “saint.”^j It is no real leap to imagine how things progressed from this point to the superstitions which were common in 16th century Europe, and played a large role in the advent of the Reformation.

Despite Luther’s combat with the “cult of the saints” in his day, the Augsburg Confession of 1530 (of which he was a key author), says this in its 21st article: “saints may be remembered in order that we imitate their faith and good works, according to our calling.”^k And commenting on this later, Philipp Melanchthon listed three ways Christians may duly honor the saints: by giving thanks to God for their lives, by our own faith being strengthened in remembering theirs, and by imitating them.^l

And again, despite the Reformers’ opposition to saintly superstition, as Notre Dame historian James F. White says, 

“One of the great ironies of this period is that, despite the Reformers’ professed dislike of medieval accounts of the saints such as the Golden Legend of c. 1265, they themselves soon became the stuff of such books. Luther was hardly dead before Ludwig Rabus published Accounts of God’s Chosen Witnesses, Confessors, and Martyrs (Strassburg, 1552). Two years later, John Foxe’s great martyrology, Acts and Monuments, appeared in Latin in Strassburg and in English in 1563. It was destined to be one of the most influential books ever published in English.”^m

We should not think ourselves “above” all of this. Our own “heroes of the faith” can occupy outsized places in our conception of our faith. But I would suggest that this does not mean we puritanically reject all commemoration and celebration of the “saints.” In fact, if I may be so bold, we may actually inhibit our own lives of sanctification and faith by failing to mark and celebrate those who have done it well before us!

David asks, “O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place?” (Psalms 15 & 24). And the answer is, “He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart.” (Ps 15:2) And, “He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false.” (Ps 24:4) To be sure, these psalms were fulfilled perfectly by Christ Himself—the only sinless and perfect man. And so, before all else, we look to Him as our Savior and perfect exemplar who entered the Holy of Holies in the heavenly places, as Hebrews 9:12 says. Yet even His perfect example did not rule out other lesser ones! Not two chapters later, Hebrews 11’s great “Hall of Faith” lists the faithful lives of saints like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and untold others who “conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouth of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign enemies to flight,” and so on (Heb 11:33-34). 

The world was not worthy of these, it says (11:38), and yet, something better was provided for us (11:40), because we have received the promises fulfilled in Christ! And so if all of this was true of these Old Covenant saints without the promises, how much more is it true of New Covenant saints with the promises? Polycarp, Ignatius, and countless others since have lived exemplary lives, following Christ, which ought to strengthen us for lives of faith likewise. Judgment has now been given for the saints of the Most High; the kingdom and the dominion and greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven is and shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him (Dan 7:21-27). 

While being a “saint” does not mean being someone who has died and later been canonized after sufficient investigation into some miracle being performed on account of you—for all who believe are “saints” (just look at passages like Pss 32:11; 30:4; 31:23; 34:9; 37:28; Acts 9:13; Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:2; Eph 4:11-12; etc.)—we would do well to mark the lives of the departed faithful. We would do well to commemorate and celebrate those who, as the hymn says, “met the tyrant’s brandished steel” and the “lion’s gory mane,” and “climbed the steep ascent of heaven through peril, toil, and pain.” The Venerable Bede wrote that through the church, we are taught to follow Christ Jesus our Head, fearing “neither shame nor cross nor death,” and being “invigorated to persevere manfully in conflict unto the very end.”ⁿ For indeed, as St. Paul says, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” (Rom 8:18)

Celebrating individual “saints’ days” might be too much for many today. But All Saints’ Day (November 1) is an appropriate time to do so. Even All Souls’ Day (November 2), which was initially a day to remember the souls in Purgatory, can perhaps be redeemed. While rejecting the doctrine of Purgatory, we might celebrate martyrs specifically on November 1st since, as we saw, they were the earliest “saints” who were commemorated by Christians, and then all those who have died in the faith on November 2nd. 

We are not alone, but are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. Therefore, following the footsteps of Christ and the millions or billions of others who followed Him to death, “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb 12:1-3)

1.  As John F. Baldovin points out, “celebration” is a “feast”—an “exuberant manifestation of life itself—while “commemoration is simple remembrance. Nonetheless, either “celebration” or “commemoration” may be used in discussions of remembrance. John F. Baldovin, “On Feasting the Saints,” Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year, ed. Maxwell E. Johnson (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000), 376.   (back)
2.  James F. White, “Forgetting and Remembering the Saints,” Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year, ed. Maxwell E. Johnson (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000), 402.   (back)
3.  Frank C. Senn, The People’s Work: A Social History of the Liturgy (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), 204.   (back)
4.  Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 173.   (back)
5.  “The Martyrdom of St. Polycarp,” in The Apostolic Fathers, trans. Francis X. Glimm, Joseph M-F Marique,and Gerald G. Walsh, vol. 1, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1947), 160.   (back)
6.  Augustine of Hippo, “On Care to Be Had for the Dead,” in St. Augustin: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. H. Browne, vol. 3, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 541.   (back)
7.  Baldovin, Between Memory, 378.   (back)
8.  Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 12ff. Cited in Bradshaw, 172.   (back)
9.  Ignatius of Antioch, “The Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 75.   (back)
10.  Bradshaw, Origins, 189.   (back)
11.  Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 59.   (back)
12.  White, Between Memory, 403.   (back)
13. Ibid., 404.   (back)
14.  The Anglican Breviary (Long Island, NY: Frank Gavin Liturgical Foundation, 1955), 1520.   (back)
15.  From the hymn, “Quisquis valet numerare.” Ibid., 1515   (back)