Homily for 1 November 2024 All Saints Day
Rev 7,2-4, 9-14; Ps 24; 1Jn 3,1-3; Mt 5,1-12
Saints are not made in heaven but on earth
intro:
Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints. And we contemplate the “mystery of the Communion of
Saints” of Heaven and Earth. We are not alone; we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses:
together, we then make up one body in Christ. The glorious army of the Saints intercedes on our behalf
before God, accompanies us on our way to the Kingdom, and stimulates us to keep our eyes fxed on
Jesus.
+ + +
“Life is our journey from B to D and so reach E —that is, from Birth to Death to reach Eternity. What is
between B and D is C—that is, the Choice on how to live it.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus
proposes the way to live out our journey unto Eternity, into the embrace of God with the Beatitudes.
Today, we celebrate in our very limited temporal way the glory in eternity of the life that God shares
with our fellow human confreres. It is the life that we too do not just hope for. We have a reason to
rejoice as we are reminded that it is the life that God calls us all to – to share with Him in eternity as
John hints in the Book of Revelation.
In his First Letter, John reminds us to think of the love which God has lavished on us – a love that
allows us to be called the sons and daughters of God and therefore may inherit a place in heaven with
God. And that “everyone who has this hope based on Him makes himself pure, as He is pure.”
Psalm 24 gives us advice about how to get to heaven. It asks, “Who can ascend the mountain of the
Lord, or who may stand in his holy place?” “One whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean, who
desires not what is useless.”
If heaven is only for those who are pure and sinless, might it be well that we just give up now? Well,
the Good News is that Jesus Christ came to forgive us of our sins. He forgives our sins without
lowering the standard. A clean heart and sinless hands and pure desires are still necessary, and the
Lord will bring us up to the standard and even higher.
That higher standard is set today in the Gospel as Jesus presents the Beatitudes. Some people consider
them to be a kind of commandment, but maybe we can look at them as a ruler. Remember how when
we were growing up, we stood by the kitchen wall and marked our height. Those marks, now long
gone, show how we grew, inch by inch.
The Beatitudes are like that wall. Periodically we ought to stand up next to these Gospel Standards
and see how we are growing. Inch by inch, reaching heaven by inches, always growing, never
shrinking back, and someday we will be a saint in heaven.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus presents a sort of a blueprint for Christian living. The Lord reversed the
human expectations of those who were thought to be fortunate. He announced that true happiness
(Greek: makarios – blessed) is not found in wealth and power. Jesus promised eternal reward for all
who humbly sought God’s will despite diffculties. But the “blessedness” that the Lord exhorts us to is
not some future glory; it is the blessedness that exists in the here and now. Jesus exemplifed every
Beatitude. He was poor (Mt 8:20) and gentle and meek (11:29). He grieved over sin and hungered and
thirsted for God’s justice (12:18). He was merciful (12:16-21) and single-hearted in his desire to do God’s
will (26:39). Jesus suffered persecution and died to bring about God’s kingdom (27:50). He gave us the
ideal that every Christian should constantly pursue in order to be holy people, worthy of God’s reign.
All the saints were not born in heaven. Like all of us, they were born on earth and so lived an earthly
life in their time as we do today. Yes, saints are not made in heaven but on earth. They were ordinary
people like us who did something about it. Yes, they were regular people, but they never settled for
that. They were exemplary in their life of taking up and embracing the “Cross” – of relationship with
God (vertical) and with others (horizontal). Consequently, the saints – who were living, breathing
human beings like each and every one of us – now enjoy the beatifc vision in the eternal Kingdom.
We honor the saints because they remind us of who we are and what we could be! They remind us of
what Jesus did for us, and can do with us, in us, and through us!
At Baptism, we were already initiated into eternal life in God. Yes, our lifetime is a pilgrimage to the
eternal city of God. We are pilgrims on our way home. The path is found in the beatitudes, and the end
is found in heaven.
Finally, let us call on Mary, the Queen of all Saints to come to our aid in our journey to eternity. Let us
approach her with the oldest known prayer as it appeared on a papyrus dating from the 3rd century:
Under your protection, we fee,
Mary Mother of God.
Despise not our petition in our needs,
but deliver us always from all dangers,
O glorious and blessed Virgin.
Amen.
