Original Posting At http://bishoppeggyjohnson.blogspot.com/2019/10/all-saints-day.html
The Church calendar includes “All Saints Day” on November 1 each year to remember truly faithful Christians who have gone before us and to contemplate and perhaps even emulate their heroic lives. One of the benefits of my time serving on the Roman Catholic-United Methodist dialogue team has been a new appreciation for the saints and martyrs and their many feast days.
At the very first meeting I attended in 2016 at the St. John’s Abbey (a Community of Benedictine Monks) in Collegeville, Minnesota, I saw the actual remains of Saint Peregrine, who refused to worship the Roman emperor and was martyred in the year 192. His body is covered with jewels and a white cloth as it lay in a glass coffin.
Recently I learned about Saint Lucy when I observed a picture of a young girl holding a tray with two eye balls. The priest on the dialogue team explained that this saint was also a martyr who lived in Syracuse, Sicily. She died during the Diocletianic Persecution in 304 AD because she refused to marry, due to a vow of purity she made to God.
According to legend, the soldiers who were instructed to execute her could not move her, even with a team of oxen. Then they tried to burn her, but the flames would not consume her body. Finally they gouged out her eyes and thrust a sword down her throat, and she died.Still today, the light of Lucy’s wreath of candles shines for us saints who yet walk the earth seeking to serve others and to worship only God. Each day we proclaim our faith and devotion to God by our words and our actions. Each day we have the opportunity to give generously and sacrificially to those in need.
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