During the recent Papal Visit to France, there was a spectacular and dramatic retelling of the history of the Church in France through the lives of its saints. (If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here.) Even skipping some of their holy men and women for the sake of brevity, there was still a continuous stream of inspiring examples from every century, some among the most famous and influential saints there are.

Would something similar be possible with the saints of Britain? It would be difficult. Because the faith in this country has so often been interrupted. That’s not to ignore the persecution that the Church in France has also suffered — they are not without their martyrs by any means. But the great flourishing of holiness that France saw in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with holy founders of orders to run schools, hospitals and orphanages, wasn’t possible here. Their procession ended with twentieth-century saints; our most recent canonised saint died in 1890 — though he is one we like very much!

The story of our own saints is not one of national continuity, but of personal fidelity. Someone did the hard thing in the face of enormous pressure not to. Alban gave up his life to protect a priest. The saints of Lindisfarne cultivated a totally different way of life to the people around them. And when the Vikings invaded, when their world collapsed, they carried on anyway. Thomas Becket stood up not just to the king, but to his friend. John Fisher was the one bishop who said “no” when everyone else was willing to give in. John Henry Newman left behind almost everyone he knew to become a Catholic.

Our story is not of a Catholic culture that persists uninterrupted through the centuries, but of Christians who remained faithful when the culture around them did not. It is a history of those who were countercultural.

There is a danger of thinking that this means we can only be saints if we provoke people enough to persecute us! Being countercultural for Christ does not mean looking constantly for opportunities to disagree with everyone else. But it does mean refusing to let everyone else decide what is true and good for us. Faithfulness in the small things presents its own challenges — martyrdom may not be easy but it is at least simple! Our own paths to holiness may not always be so clear. But if we are willing to do the hard thing, perhaps we might help to bring our list of saints into the present century.

The year does not end abruptly. It declines by degrees. The light withdraws a little earlier each evening, the leaves redden before they fall, and the harvest is gathered in before the cold arrives. Autumn (or the Fall)  is the season which lets us see that fruitfulness and loss belong together.

The psalmist prays, “Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps 90:12). The prayer asks for wisdom, not for more days. We usually spend our mornings planning the business of the day and doing it — or not. The evening is often spent regretting the things “we have left undone” and feeling vaguely unsatisfactory and wishing we hadn’t wasted so much of that precious commodity, Time. Augustine saw that the soul’s restlessness is only quieted in God. Perhaps the evening of life is when we first stop fighting that restlessness and let it lead us home.

Scripture does not romanticise old age, and neither should we. It is a time of diminishment: of strength, of friends, of the roles that once defined who we were. Yet the Church gives us to contemplate Simeon, who waited in the temple through the long afternoon of Israel’s hope and took the child in his arms. “Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace” (Lk 2:29). That was not resignation. It was the peace of a man who had seen what he was waiting for. He sings his canticle at the end of his day, and the Church invites us to sing it with him at Compline every night.

So the evening of life asks something of us, and gives something. It asks that we put down what we cannot carry further: old grievances, the need to be needed, the illusion that the work depends on us. It gives the freedom to pray without hurry, to forgive without bargaining, and to be loved for what we are and not for what we do.

St Philip, noted for his cheerfulness and intense dislike of humbug, never lost his joie de vivre, even in old age, or the evening of life. His was a life full of thanksgiving and praise. Similarly, Autumn invites gratitude, not gloom. You could say that the leaf that falls is not defeated. It has finished its work, and it enriches the ground from which the spring will come. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:24). Some words from a sermon of our Cardinal, St John Henry Newman, are popular as a meditation on this. You know it well:

Lord, support us all the day long, until  the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy, grant us a safe lodging, a holy rest and peace at the last.  Amen.