Given that the move was less than five months ago, it’s not
surprising that it took me awhile to find the plastic container that contains
my little corner of the Communion of Saints. I discovered it under a box and
some games, the picture frames inside still enveloped in bubble wrap. These
aren’t the only photos I have of my beloved ones, alive and dead. But these are
the ones in frames, the ones that have sat on mantles and on bookshelves over
the years. On display. So we don’t forget we’re part of something larger.
I select two that I will place in the side chapel on Sunday
to mark the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. There is a small photo of my
husband’s parents taken Easter morning, 1993. And there’s one of my parents
taken 10 years before that: my mother, who is still living, and my father, who
died when I was 22.
There are countless saints in my life – the Communion of
Saints is a cloud of witnesses both living and dead, so I was taught. But these
select are my patrons, the ones who parented and formed me and pointed God out
to me, all in their own ways.
My parents grin at me from June 1983. I could have chosen
the photos taken in the early 50s, back when my mother looked a bit like Leslie
Caron and my dad was a serious World War II vet with all his hair. But I didn’t
know them then.
Instead, here is my dad as I best remember him: thin hair,
glasses and a face creased with smile lines.
I indulge in a tiny bit of self-pity. There are many, many things I
would have liked to have discussed with him over the last 26 years, many things
I would have liked to share with him. Like my in-laws, he died too young,
before all my questions were answered.
But the Feast of All Saints isn’t about nostalgia for the
dead. It’s about faith in the living, a relationship with souls that dwell as
near to us as God does. And just as I can sometimes fail to notice the intimate
presence of God, so too do I often fail to remember the intimate presence of
those who are in full communion with God. Maybe it’s because they are so
silent, as God is silent.
But they also speak.
When I want to know what my father would say to me about my
life choices, I can consult the hagiography – the saintly and sometimes
selective story I tell about his life. I can look to his philosophy of
parenting and work (his field was vocational education). I can recall his
readiness to walk and talk, his willingness to build things upon request, from
dollhouses to dulcimers. I can tell the story of how he joined the Catholic Church
in his own sweet time, more than 30 years after he told my mother he’d convert.
I can savor his theology: “It all boils down to this: God is love. It’s as
simple as that.”
If I would like to hear his voice now, in the intimate proximity that I believe my father shares with the divine, I must do this: I must put myself in my most receptive posture. I must quiet my side of things -- my memories, my loss, my grief. And I must take my place in the Communion of Saints, which speaks with one voice: God is love. And those who abide in love, abide in God. And God in them.
- Barb Ballenger
