An All Saints Latin lesson

Omnipotens et misericors Deus, de cuius munere venit ut tibi a fidelibus tuis digne et laudabiliter serviatur, tribue, quaesumus, nobis, ut ad promissiones tuas sine offensione curramus.

Almighty and eternal God, by whose gift your faithful people serve you in a worthy and praiseworthy manner, grant, we pray, that we may run unerringly towards your promises.

The Carthusians, who, one might argue, are a touch too big for their boots, have a certain aversion to canonization: non sanctos patefacere, they say, sed multos sanctos facere: not to make many saints known, but to make many saints. The implication, intentionally or not, is that their standard are so high that nobody could ever reach them and be considered a saint. They do celebrate those Carthusian saints who have been canonized with as much vigour as any other Order, but they pride themselves on how few there are. For the nuns, indeed, there is only one: St Rosaleen who, though she has nothing to do with Roisin Dubh, would make a good dedication for an Irish house of nuns. Well, I don’t see why they are so sniffy about having their saints known; surely the more the better, and the greater the variety the better. Today’s feast, although it is mainly for the unknown saints (plenty of Carthusians, then) is encouraging because, quite simply, there are so many of them: a multitude that none can number, a vast cloud of witnesses. it would be even better (though impossible) to know the names and circumstances of each one.

But the Carthusians have got one thing right: when the obituaries are read in the chapterhouse, a select few are given the accolade “laudabiliter vixit” – lived in a praiseworthy manner. And, the implication is, if the Carthusians praise them, they must be praiseworthy indeed! Be that as it may, the word “laudabiliter” is spot on.

Digne et laudabiliter: that is very reminiscent of – indeed, means almost the same as – that other calm and prosaic description of the way a Christian should live their life: “iuste et pie”. Calm and prosaic, like so much true spirituality and mysticism; like Thomas Aquinas; and like all things that are seriously demanding. There’s no hot blood to get you through it; there’s no poetry or rhetoric or spin-doctoring to conceal the truth of it, the truth of its perfection and the truth of its exigency. Iuste, digne: as it should be, in a manner that measures up to the One whom we serve. Impossible, of course; the saints have done it because, as this week’s Collect tells us, God gives it to us as a gift; it is not our effort or our merit. Laudabiliter, pie: that does not so much go further as describe the first adverb: not merely worthy but praiseworthy; not merely rightly but rightly with devotion. Iuste et pie: St Paul’s little instruction to Titus is, though it does not immediately look it, an echo of the Beatitude of the pure in heart. That is well disguised by the very unsatisfactory translation of its second section in the English translation of the liturgy: “exspectantes beatam spem et adventum Domini” is rendered “as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ”. Which is not what it means. Firstly, beata spes is not joyful hope; secondly, it is one of the two direct objects of the verb. If beata spes is not joyful hope, what is it? It is – and I know this is an unfashionable word – “blessed hope”. In other words, our hope of blessedness, of beatitude; and it is here almost in apposition to “adventum Domini”, the coming of the Lord. The phrase means “awaiting the beatitude that we hope for {hope in the strictly theological sense, of course} at the coming of our Saviour”. It is the reward of living iuste et pie, digne et laudabiliter, pure in heart: to see the Lord when he comes and to know him as Saviour, not as Judge. That is certainly the moment at which our beatitude begins; but according to St John, that is also what constitutes the beatitude itself. “We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”. And he also makes the link between our hope and the coming of the Lord; the two are effectively the same; and it is to that moment that we are to direct our lives and our efforts. “For everyone who has this hope in Him sanctifies himself, just as He is holy.”

Hope does not deceive, we are told, because the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit; that, I take it, will be completely fulfilled at the moment when we see the Lord. But hope does not deceive – hope cannot possibly deceive – because it is founded upon the firm promises of God; and that is why I stressed before that when we say we “hope” for beatitude, that “hope” is to be understood as the theological virtue.

The phrase “to travel hopefully” is a very good description of the Christian life, if “hopefully” is taken in that sense. St Benedict and this week’s Collect would like us to run, the Collect (aware of the risks of that) thoughtfully asking God to remove all obstacles from our path as we do so. Well, running may be risky, but speed does have its advantages, as anyone who has tried to keep a bike upright at a snail’s pace in a traffic jam or behind a combine harvester knows. The Christian life is more like riding a bike than like going on foot: you have to keep moving or you will fall off. And as all good riders know, though not all act accordingly, it is not enough to keep the Highway Code – to ride digne et iuste. In the training book for the theory test there is a whole section on “attitude”: the way in which we keep the Highway Code, riding laudabiliter et pie – with, dare I say it, a pure heart.

Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God. I have not yet worked out whether All Saints always falls in this week, always, therefore, has this Collect around it, but if so that is most appropriate. It is hard to see the saints as largely people like us, people who had to work to get to heaven, people who were not noticed in their lifetime and apparently did no heroic deeds of virtue and sanctity. But they were; and there is no reason whatever why we should not join them in glory. We do not need to be martyred or live immensely ascetic lives’ we do not need to “do” anything at all that is visible, much less extraordinary’ simply, digne et laudabiliter, to direct our intention towards God. It may not feel like serving at all; we may wonder what value our lives can possibly have in his eyes. But it is’ by his gift it is. Somehow in God’s eyes, to be pure in heart is enough; that is the service he asks of us. The form our activity takes is up to us’ if it is undertaken digne et laudabiliter, with a heart as pure as our desire and his ft can make it, then we need not worry about whether it is pleasing service or whether it will get us to heaven: it is the service he has chosen; and we are already there.