You might say that saints are the Church’s success stories; but they are very different from what passes as a success in our celebrity culture, where you can become famous, even for 15 minutes, just by appearing on television. Jesus tells us in the Gospel today how we can become a success, that is, how we can make it to heaven.
The Beatitudes tell us that we will make it to heaven if we are poor; if we are dependent on God; if we are gentle, not aggressive and violent; if we weep and mourn for the sheer lack of justice in the world; and, oddest of all, we will be blessed if we are persecuted for the sake of Jesus.
This feast celebrates all the saints – these are the real celebrities of the Church. They are the ones like Theresa of Avila, like Dominic, Francis, Catherine of Siena; they recognized the way they were lived out by Jesus and then tried to embody those values in their own lives.
This feast also commemorates the innumerable people who have lived holy lives in a quiet and unobtrusive way without ever being canonized. We have all known such people. And they can be our inspiration today.
In a society that can be skeptical about the possibility of leading really good lives, this feast of All Saints reminds us that we are called to be saints, called in our daily lives to respond to Christ’s invitation to be holy. In our homes and at work, in the school and the parish, ordinary Christians like ourselves can show sparks of holiness. Beatitudes promise us blessedness.
There by Mary Coleridge
There, in that other world, what waits for me?
What shall I find after that other birth?
No stormy, tossing, foaming, smiling sea,
But a new earth.No sun to mark the changing of the days,
No slow, soft falling of the alternate night,
No moon, no star, no light upon my ways,
Only the Light.No gray cathedral, wide and wondrous fair,
That I may tread where all my fathers trod.
Nay, nay, my soul, no house of God is there,
But only God.