ALL SAINTS DAY.

Rv 7:2-4, 9-14 / 1 Jn 3:1-3 / Mt 5:1-12a 

Today, we celebrate the reality of the Mystery of Salvation. All Saints’ Day is celebrated in honor of innumerable living and luminous witnesses of Christ. “All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity” (C.C.C §2013). But how can we experience this “intimate union with Christ”?

In the “Creed” we confess: I believe in the communion of saints. Since the saints already enjoy the eternal vision of God, they cannot be united to us through faith and hope; but, they can, instead, be united to us through charity. “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1Cor 13:13). Therefore, it is not that we venerate the saints only because of their exemplarity. There is a stronger reason than that: to be united in Spirit with the whole Church invigorated by the practice of the fraternal charity.

God wills that the saints communicate grace to each other through prayer with great love, with a love much greater than that of a family, and even the most perfect family on earth. How often have I thought that I may owe all the graces I've received to the prayers of a person who begged them from God for me, and whom I shall know only in heaven. In heaven, we shall not meet with indifferent glances, because all the elect will discover that they owe to each other the graces that merited the crown for them.

“The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle.

We do not accept our Salvation passively. Action and involvement are crucial for salvation. In John’s vision one of elders in his vision says that those who survived great distress “have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb." In other words, they not simply accepted their salvation through “the Blood of the Lamb,” through Christ’s sacrifice. They “washed their robes,” they became actively involved in their salvation. Or, as the second reading of today says, God’s children are what they are because they made themselves pure.

Today is our feast day, since we don't have to be dead to be a saint — but  be baptized. However, if we want this day to remain a day of celebration for us, we must not only be baptized but also live our Baptism.

To live our Baptisms means to be so immersed in Jesus' death and Resurrection that:

We choose to be poor as He did (Mt 5:3).

Learn to be lowly (Mt 5:5) and humble of heart (Mt 11:29).

We hunger and thirst for Jesus' righteousness and not our selfishness (Mt 5:6).

We forgive others and give them mercy as Jesus did even on the cross (Mt 5:7).

We prefer to be persecuted with and for Jesus rather than to be popular and comfortable (Mt 5:10).

The Beatitudes are a summary of the Sermon on the Mount and the essence of the Gospel.  We were never told what was commanded or forbidden or even recommended by the eight Beatitudes. the Ten Commandments are basic rules of morality, but the Beatitudes are a measure of how far beyond this the Gospel calls us.  

The morality of the Ten Commandments is a morality that can be measured: it is possible to say exactly where you are with them, ticking the ones you broke and the degree of the breach.  Christians may come to believe that they have no sin just because they haven't been in breach of the Commandments.  The morality of the Beatitudes is harder to quantify: how poor in spirit am I ?  How meek, gentle, merciful…?  You can never say “I’ve reached it!”  We can never even begin to think that we are better than another – because we can't compare.

They are not the virtues of a person saturated with a sense of his or her own importance, but of a person saturated with the consciousness of God. 

So, the beatitudes sum up pretty well the kind of people God wants us to be—the kind of people the saints were in their lives on earth.

Saints are not extraordinary exceptions of humanity. Rather, saints are those people who are most fully human. They know the joys and pains of the human heart; they wrestle with doubts and fears; they know that they are sinners, and yet still called to serve the lord in his Vineyard. They do not run from reality, but plunge into the mess- be it interior darkness or exterior persecution. Saints live first for God, which strengthens them to let go of their egos and plans.

Lets try to answer the call of holiness in our own unique way. God does not expect perfection, but generosity and dedication in our service of His kingdom. As Blessed Teresa poetically put it, We can do no great things, only small things with great love”.