The world is rarely as settled as we imagine it to be. There are moments, however, when its instability is particularly difficult to ignore. Wars continue. Governments and alliances shift. Communities are divided and peoples displaced. Events in one part of the world, once thought distant, quickly make themselves felt in another. The news can leave us with the uncomfortable sense that much which appeared secure is, in fact, rather less secure than we had supposed.
For Christians, such times may bring an added temptation: to imagine that the present moment is somehow uniquely difficult, or that we are living through changes for which there can be no precedent.
The calendar of the Church offers a useful corrective. This month, as throughout the year, it places before us the lives of those who discovered what faithfulness required in circumstances very different from our own. The saints whom we remember did not inhabit an unchanging world. They lived through war and political upheaval, plague and persecution, division and uncertainty. They knew societies in transition.
We are inclined to view history from its conclusion. We know what happened next. We know which movements endured and which institutions failed. We can see the significance of a life because we have inherited its consequences.
The saints themselves did not have that advantage.
They lived, as we do, without knowing what tomorrow would bring. They made decisions without possessing a map of the future. They prayed, worked, served, and sometimes failed amidst the uncertainties of their own age. Their holiness did not consist in standing apart from the world in which they lived, but in seeking to be faithful within it.
That is, perhaps, what the communion of saints has to say to an unsettled world.
We belong to a communion which extends across centuries and continents: to the known and unknown, celebrated and forgotten, whose lives of faith have helped to form the Church into which we have ourselves been received. They remind us that our own moment, for all its urgency, is not the whole story.
In the weeks ahead, schools return. Children will enter new classrooms; families will negotiate the familiar mixture of anticipation and anxiety which accompanies a new academic year. In parishes, too, the ordinary life of the Church continues.
Such things can appear small beside the events which dominate the world’s attention. Yet the saints suggest that we should be cautious about deciding in advance what is significant.
Most of their lives were lived without any expectation that they would be known. They just inhabited the time and place given to them. So must we.
Our task is to be faithful today — surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, and conscious that those who come after us may one day look back on this unsettled age and ask what, in our own time, we chose to do.
Work for the Gazette!
We’re looking for an organised and enthusiastic Office Administrator to join our team on a 6-month fixed-term contract. This is a 14-hour per week role offering flexible working, with at least one visit to our office in Lisburn each week, and is paid at £13.50 per hour. Working closely with the Editor and the Board, you’ll help ensure the efficient day-to-day running of the Church of Ireland Gazette, with particular responsibility for distribution and payments.
Closing Date: 17:00 on Friday 16th October 2026. More details here.
