As many of you will know as soon as I see that the readings are from the pen of St John my natural inclination is to run in the opposite direction as fast as I can.  This is not because I dislike St John, but his writings take some getting into and it doesn’t matter whether it is his Gospel or the Book of Revelation.

But……what a reading we had from the Book of Revelation this morning, it is a real treasure trove.  It opened with that wonderful statement that fills you with awe……

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”

This is a vision of the future that has sustained Christians through the centuries.

The saints in years gone by from the beginnings of the Christianity looked forward to the time or even the timeless state that is described in Revelation.  It was a case that if there was nothing for which to hope for after death then their lives………indeed our lives, would have been in vain.  For all the saints, in every age including our own, it is the hope that Jesus has given us that sustains and provides us with our reason for living and for dying.

The saints of old gaze at us, from stained glass or from illuminated manuscripts, in serene holiness, their glory shining out and suggestive of an existence we only glimpse from time to time.  But we are given such glimpses because God in his love and mercy seeks to keep alive and vibrant our hope of eternal life.

If we care to, we can read about the martyrs and saints of centuries past and I am sure that there are some books in the library by the font that will enable us to do so.  And in them will no doubt discover saints whose names have long since been dropped from our calendars.  I have hagiography books, that is books about the lives of saints, which contain the names of people that I have never heard of, who lived lives in situations that I cannot begin imagine.  But who all the same are examples for us to emulate and learn from in our quest to live our lives in the way that God desires us to.

If we were to travel eastwards and visit the churches in the Orthodox communion we will find them celebrating the festivals of a multitude of saints of whom we have never heard or if we knew of them they are long forgotten.  Nearer home we only have to travel down to Cornwall to learn of yet more saints with the loveliest of names, yet who are little known this side of the Tamar.  We might know of St Petroc and St Piran, but what about Brioc, Carantoc and Morwenna?  And yet as we add to our knowledge details about the lives of these saints, this vast unseen cloud of witnesses should give us an ever increasing thankfulness that these giants of faith, whom most would not have called extraordinary in their lifetime, have fought the good fight, have finished the course and are even now here as our spiritual back up to help us by their example, their courage and their love.

Life for the early Christians, the saints of old, was not easy, especially in the period when the faith was first starting out, Christianity was persecuted and even feared by governments and held to blame for events with which they had no connection…………… you only have to read the histories of the Roman Empire in the first three centuries AD to see this and we all know about the antics of Nero and Domitian.

One of the early church fathers, the fiery Tertullian, who was someone who longed for personal patience in his life but never obtained it, thundered in righteous anger against the persecutors of the Christians – “Kill us, but the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. The more seed you sow, the more the Church will grow!”  Boy.... was he right! Tertullian knew what he was talking about.  History has shown time and again that the Church does not die under persecution.  It may take a battering, but it comes back stronger than ever.

Like a cork in water, no one can keep a Christian down.  Multiply that one cork by all the Christians in the world including all the saints, all those who have gone before, in heaven and you have an unsinkable, irrepressible force that is more than a match for the devil,

It is this fact that supports and sustains our brothers and sisters who witness to the faith in those parts of the world today where Christianity is not wanted by those in charge, distrusted, persecuted and abused by the followers of other religions.  And it is vitally important that we regularly pray for our brothers and sisters, the saints and martyrs of today, as they witness and live in these situations.  It is the power of our prayer that encourages, bolsters and supports them.

The last century gave us many examples of modern saints and martyrs, those who stood up to Nazism in the Second World War like Dietrich Bonheoffer through to Mother Theresa and Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.

Oscar Romero in the three years prior to his murder at the altar went from being a timid and conservative bishop to being the outstanding embodiment of the prophetic church, a “voice for the voiceless.”   He clearly anticipated his fate, something that would have been understood by the Christians of the early church, when he said in an interview two weeks before his assassination on 23^rd March 1980:

"I have frequently been threatened with death. I must say that, as a Christian, I do not believe in death but in the resurrection. If they kill me, I shall rise again in the Salvadoran people.

"Martyrdom is a great gift from God that I do not believe I have earned. But if God accepts the sacrifice of my life then may my blood be the seed of liberty, and a sign of the hope that will soon become a reality… A bishop will die, but the church of God – the people – will never die.

And for Oscar Romero, the church’s option for the poor was not just a matter of pastoral priorities.  It was a defining characteristic of Christian faith in his writing gave a mandate for the church that applies wherever it exists, he said, “A church that does not unite itself to the poor in order to denounce from the place of the poor, the injustice committed against them is not truly the Church of Jesus Christ.”  Powerful words from a modern day saint and martyr for us all to meditate upon.

ALL saints – eastern, western and Cornish, famous or little known, of years gone by or of our own time are honoured today, as the Church Triumphant in heaven gives the Church Militant here on earth cause for encouragement.  Many of these saints knew far greater dangers, far greater hardships and agonies that we do or than we will probably ever know. But they finished the course and cleared the final hurdle, in the strength of Christ………………and so can we……… but only in the strength of Christ.