Scripture Readings: Book of Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; First Letter of Saint John 3:1-3; Gospel According to Saint Matthew 5:1-12a
This year the Church’s liturgical festival to celebrate all of God’s saints, officially canonized or not, falls on a Sunday. Being a “big feast,” the celebration of All Saints takes the place of the usual Sunday in Ordinary time and becomes a focal point for this Sunday’s worship by God’s people in the Catholic Church throughout the world. We honor this Sunday all saints, those who now enjoy the glory of heaven with God.
Even if not canonized by name, “all saints” are recognized by God and the Church and form a “cloud of witnesses” (see Letter to the Hebrews 13:1) in God’s presence. Their dwelling with God is a source of inspiration and edification for us, literally meaning our being “built up” to follow in their footsteps.
The Solemnity of All Saints is intended in part to sustain and even raise our sense of hope in longing to “be with God” forever in heaven. This is what the saints, who have gone before us in faith, now enjoy and which we hope to experience as well as end our earthly existence, entering a new life in Christ beyond time and space.
This Sunday, and really every Sunday and day that we take time to ponder the mystery of God-with-us, we realize that it is not in vain that we believe in Jesus Christ. We believe so as to secure our steps in the way of love in this life and then to enjoy for eternity, “life on high,” as it is sometimes described, with the Holy Trinity, as well as all the angels and saints, in Paradise or Heaven. This we hold firm to as a matter of faith and dogma.
The number of the elect or saved, one hundred and forty-four thousand, described in the Book of Revelation is not to be understood as a literal number, but a figurative one. It indicates a perfect number, and we are certainly called to be among that number, however many it may actually be when all is said and done.
On one level, the actual number of “saved” is not so important as the fact that there are multitudes, coming from everywhere over the ages, who through a life of perseverance in the ways of the Lord are now enjoying the rewards of eternal life in God’s presence. A sublime and great mystery this is, but something we hold dear as believers in God and members of the Church.
The Apostle Saint John speaks in his letter assigned to this solemnity of All Saints of the certainty that is to characterize followers of Jesus, who are not just called to be, but really are children of God, awaiting the fullness of what that means in the life yet to come. Even in this life, though, we participate to some degree in God’s glory, part and parcel of a life of faith, hope and love in God’s Church.
We can say that in celebrating All Saints no one missing from the picture and there are no favorites. Sure, we may have our favorites, such as for me, Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica, Saint Therese of Lisieux, Blessed Charles de Foucauld and others, but in God’s sight they are equal and all of them “full participants” in God’s life in heaven. So too no one saint has a head start on the others. All were called, as we are all called, to holiness, meaning nearness to God and conformed to God’s likeness by a life of loving service of God and neighbor.
The theme of growing in holiness or likeness to God continues in this Sunday’s Gospel passage from Saint Matthew, where Jesus gives his followers the “Beatitudes,” as they are usually called.
Jesus is seated, in the rabbinical manner of teaching, and gives instructions to everyone, no matter what may be their financial situation or age, and merely thirsting for holiness as the needed criterion to take up his teaching.
The Beatitudes make few demands but can be very demanding nonetheless. Daily interacting with others requires patience, tact, genuineness and many other virtues. We are to live openly and trustingly within our family and faith community, with co-workers or fellow-students, wherever we meet and rub shoulders with others. Therein lies the heart of our going to God.
We may tend to think of more dramatic actions are needed to become holy, such as going to the slums or the ends of the earth and ministering to the poor there. Some are indeed called to that and find holiness in so doing. For the vast majority of followers of Christ, though, the task is to live and love well in the ordinary places and ways that are required in daily living.
I like this quote from the late biblical scholar, Father Carroll Stuhlmueller, of the Passionist Order. He says, in commenting on the Beatitudes:
“In the bond of faith within the extended family of the Church or within our immediate family or neighborhood and community, we realize how our being poor in spirit has settled the reign of God in our midst; how consoling others in their sorrow brings the blessedness of forgetting one’s own sorrow; how sharing one’s goods with others soothes the hunger and thirst within ourselves. With such blessed single-heartedness in reaching outward, we become “children of God” and even “see God” (from “Biblical Meditations for Ordinary Time, Weeks 23 – 34,” Paulist Press, 1984, page 412).
In other words, there are many opportunities for sanctity in our daily life. Openness to God’s presence and activity in our life is a path toward sharing one day with all the angels and saints the reward of eternal life.
Yes, All Saints Day is about the blessed who have gone before us, but also an invitation to be counted among them eventually, for therein lies true fulfillment and happiness.
We long to see God’s face. May we always eagerly walk in the ways that Jesus has taught, the path to wholeness and holiness open before us life, a mysterious and wonderful road that leads to God’s house.
All you saints of God, pray for us!
Prior Christian Leisy, OSB
Monastery of Christ in the Desert
Abiquiu, New Mexico.
