For All the Saints

Today is All Saints' Day, one of my favorite days in the Church year. One of my favorite hymns is associated withAll Saints' Day. It's not great music but it is one that has stuck with me since childhood--I remember singing it in children's choir. It begins:

I sing a song of the Saints of God
Patient and brave and true.
They toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor and one was a queen
And one was a shepherdess on the green.
They were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping to be one, too.

Now the "toiling and fighting" part doesn't speak to me so much, but what grabbed me even as a child is that saints are not just "holy people", not just the figures of scripture, not just story book myth and legend. No, the saints are everyday folk, struggling just as we all do, to live the lives to which we are called. We encounter the saints, often unaware, in the midst of out daily lives--on city streets or country lanes, at work, at school, in our families--wherever we go about our life and work.

Today I remember the saints in my life--all those who touched me in various ways, who loved me, who nurtured me in ways large and small and helped me to become the person that I am. I remember especially my father and my beloved mother-in-law, both of whom died too soon. And I remember those saints whom I never met, but whose lives nonetheless shaped mine--especially today Rosa Parks whose fortitude is an example to all of us.

Who are the saints in your life?