Episode 94: Lives That Catch the Light (Advent Saints, Part 1)

The church has a funny way of keeping time.  We start the year a month or so before everybody else cracks open their new calendars with a season called "Advent," and we talk about those who have gone before us as still somehow connected to us in the present in the "communion of saints."  We even remember the stories and lives of some of those older sisters and brothers in the faith on the date of their death, rather than something that might seem cheerier to the wider world, because for the people of God, even death isn't the end of our time, but the prelude to resurrection.  So here as the church year starts over again with a new season of Advent to turn our hearts toward the coming of Christ, Erica, Sarah, and Steve start a new series looking at some of the lives of sisters and brothers in the faith whose stories are often told at this time of year.  We'll have to talk about what it means to be a "saint," and why that is a title for all the people of God to claim, why we tell the stories of saints past and present, and how the examples (both in successes and failures) of other saints can shape our own lives so that we can reflect the light of Christ into the world, even on dark and dreary late November days.