“After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands…. [One of the elders] said to me, ‘These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’ “.

- Revelation 7: 9,14

For all the saints
Whom no one thought to name
No litany of bliss
For their praise proclaims

For the homely saints
No halo aglow
Favored by the Lord
But to us so so

For the ruined saints
Who craved no boardroom glee
But offered their arms
And gave without fee

For the tattered saints
Who found no rest at home
But served in patient woe
And shrank in hearts alone

For the silent saints
Captured by their pain
Offering it to Him
For salvation’s gain

For the saint unseen
By power or by peer
The crownless heir of love
Raised on Christ’s bier

The lumpen hump of flesh
Draped across bench
Whose spit is his smile
And bouquet his stench

For the blithering saint
Whose strings of words bemuse
His blank stare runs counter
To the civil use

For the stunted saints
No worldly stature given
Graced by a shrug
And through neglect shriven

For the hidden saints
Caught in His eye
Reflections of God’s love
In ordinary guise

The humble face of saints
Uncanonized
Lies in the dust
By Him only prized

For these great saints
We have yet to know
Celebrate today!
Feast on crow.