To The Saints

To the saints,

Thank you for your legacy. For 2000 years you worked, in your own times, to pass on the love of God. You preserved your work so that we might learn from it. You wrote volumes, treatises, apologies, letters and held on to them. You sat in councils and debated the future of the Church. You prayed and loved and fretted and worried. You were martyred. You took care of the poor and the oppressed, even when no one was watching. The vast majority of your names have been forgotten, but you live on anyway. You were never perfect, but neither are we.

To the saints,

Thank you for the work you are doing. You wrestle with the issues facing the Church today. You don’t know what the future brings, but you work with the trust that it will be God’s reign that comes to the world. You work for justice and peace on a war-torn planet. You pass down what you have learned to the next generation. Your names are known now, but when they fade away and the world forgets who you were, it will not forget your legacy. You do not know now what your lives will end up to be, someday, you will.

To the saints,

Thank you for what you will do and who you will be. We don’t know your names, and we never will in our own lifetimes. You are hidden from us. But we have faith that you will grow in the trust of the Lord. We don’t yet know what legacy we will pass on to you, and we regret that it may not be the legacy we want to leave behind. Forgive us, if we will wrong you, for it is true that we know not what we do. Remember us, even when our names are dust in the wind. We wish we could know you now, but we look forward to meeting you in a new heaven and a new earth, when the old have passed away and we will all live together again with God.

Love,
The Saints