Rector's Message: Last Autumn
The Reverend Tom Sander reflects on how, as Christians, we approach the shortening days and the year's impending close
I have always thought that there is something rather melancholy about November. I fear that, were there to be a poll of people’s favourite months of the year, November would find itself rather low down the list, if not at the very bottom.
The clocks have changed, the vibrancy of autumn has begun to fade, and there is a sad resignation that the summer which was is now well and truly behind us. The days grow shorter, the evenings darker, and we are confronted with the uncomfortable reality that another year is drawing to its close.
I was dealt a particularly crushing blow recently whilst scrolling through social media. My eyes fell upon a photograph of a man gazing wistfully into a late summer sunset, over which were written the words: ‘If you’re reading this and were born in 1987, you’ve just had your last summer in your 30s.’ I confess that this was not a thought I had particularly wished to entertain!
November, of course, begins with the great celebration of All Saints, followed immediately by All Souls. These two commemorations invite us to remember those who have gone before us: the saints whose lives have borne witness to the Gospel through the centuries, and those who, through family, friendship and affection, have walked alongside us on our own earthly pilgrimage.
It is a season to be inspired, to give thanks, and to remember. But it is also a season in which the Church invites us to contemplate our own mortality and to ask that most sobering of questions: Are we ready?
Are we ready to meet the Lord?
John Donne wrote that ‘our last autumn is our everlasting spring.’ He was writing, of course, long before the terrible events of the two World Wars added another solemn dimension to November and made remembrance so much a part of our national consciousness. Yet, as so often with Donne, he gently lifts our eyes beyond the immediate and the passing, towards the eternal perspective in which our lives are held.
For the Christian, autumn is not simply a season of decline, nor death the final extinguishing of life's light. The falling leaves and shortening days may remind us of the transience of earthly things, but they also point us towards the promise that what appears to be an ending may, in the providence of God, be a new beginning.
As November draws to its close, the Church prepares to begin her year afresh with Advent. We turn once again towards the coming of Christ, the Light which shines in the darkness and which the darkness has not overcome.
And perhaps that is November's particular gift to us. In a world which so often encourages us to turn away from the uncomfortable realities of ageing, loss and death, the Church invites us to look upon them with honesty, but never without hope. For we are not simply travelling towards the darkness of winter, but towards the everlasting light of resurrection glory.
The Christian hope is not that autumn can be avoided, nor that the passing years can somehow be reclaimed, but that in Christ no season of our lives, however dark or difficult, is beyond the promise of renewal.
Our last autumn is our everlasting spring.
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