For over a thousand years, the Western Church has observed the festival of All Saints in November, and in spite of some medieval abuses concerning the saints, Lutherans have continued to view the saints and All Saints Day as worthy of commemoration. In numerous New Testament passages, the term “saints” refers to any faithful member of Christ's Church (for example, Acts ch. 9, Romans chs. 1,8, 12, 15, 16, Hebrews chs. 6, 13, Jude v. 3; Revelation chs. 5, 8, 11,13, etc.). All Christians are saints or “holy ones” because they have been made holy by faith in our Savior Jesus Christ. They have Holy Baptism and the Holy Spirit. They belong to Christ’s holy universal Church.
The saints are the kind of believers that our Lord calls "blessed" in the traditional reading from Matthew 5. They are not all saintly or holy in the sense of being perfect examples, but they are holy in the sense that they belong to God and have been set apart for His purposes. They are ordinary people who believe in Jesus as Savior and who remain loyal to Christ and His Gospel through the varied circumstances of this earthly life. These blessed people hunger and thirst for righteousness and continue faithful, even through persecution and death.
There have been many blessed saints, famous and unknown, in the past, and there are still saints in the present. We give thanks for the examples and influence of past and present saints. Even more importantly, we hope and pray that we are also saints. May God's grace strengthen us in our Christian faith and keep us saints in thought, word, and deed- graciously forgiven and made holy through living faith in the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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