The Faith Handed Down

“Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death.”

That is the refrain of the hymn with which we shall close our Holy Communion service later this morning at Church of Our Saviour. It reminds us that the Christian faith did not begin with us. We received it from generations of faithful people—parents, grandparents, priests, teachers, and friends—many of whom we remember today with gratitude and love.

The Lectionary Speaks as a Whole

If we wish to understand fully what the Church intends us to learn on any feast, we must not consider only the Epistle and Gospel at Holy Communion. We must also consult the lessons appointed for Morning and Evening Prayer. The lectionary teaches cumulatively. One service expands, amplifies, and completes the teaching of another.

At Holy Communion today, the Beatitudes tell us what sort of people Our Lord calls blessed. The Revelation shows us the great multitude gathered before the throne. At Morning Prayer, Psalms 1 and 15 show what that blessed life looks like in ordinary practice: speaking truth, treating our neighbours justly, keeping our promises, and delighting in the ways of God.

Held in the Hand of God

The first lesson comes from the Wisdom of Solomon, one of the books of the Apocrypha which the Church reads for our instruction. Its message is wonderfully simple: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God.”

This ancient lesson gives us a pattern that becomes clear in Jesus Christ. On Good Friday he appeared defeated. On Easter morning God revealed that death had not conquered him. Because we belong to Christ, his victory gives the words of Wisdom their fullness. Our suffering is not the end of our story, and death does not have the last word.

That promise matters because we miss our friends and family terribly. Faith does not remove the empty chair, the familiar voice we long to hear, or the wish that we could tell them one more thing. Our Lord himself wept at the grave of Lazarus. Christian hope does not ask us to pretend that separation does not hurt.

A Promise Greater Than Memory

But Scripture tells us that this separation is not forever. Wisdom assures us that the faithful departed are held in the hand of God. Our Lord promises that he will lose nothing entrusted to him, but will raise it up at the last day. Saint Paul tells us that the dead in Christ shall rise and that we shall be “together with them” in the presence of the Lord.

Our hope, therefore, is greater than memory. We do not merely believe that those we love continue in our thoughts. We believe that they live in Christ and that, through his Resurrection, we shall see them again—not in the weakness or illness in which we may last have seen them, but restored in the life of God’s eternal kingdom.

Although our focus today is All Saints, this lesson also prepares us for the remembrance of the faithful departed on All Souls’ Day. All Saints lifts our eyes toward the whole company of heaven. All Souls allows us to remember the particular names and faces whose absence still wounds us. We give thanks for them, pray for them, and entrust them to God—not because we doubt his care, but because love continues across the boundary of death.

The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

Finally, the nineteenth chapter of the Revelation carries Saint John’s vision forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb. The saints are gathered because they belong to Christ, Faithful and True. Their victory is his victory, and his victory is the foundation of our hope.

This is the faith handed down to us. We remember those who taught it to us. We give thanks for them, pray for them, and entrust them to God. Until Christ gathers us together again, may we remain true to that holy faith—walking faithfully, loving generously, and letting his light shine through our lives.