I was recently reading a newspaper article from USTODAY about the power of prayers. The article interviewed a hospital chaplain in Louisville, Kentucky who stated: "I love praying for people because I believe that prayer works…. Any time I can spend praying or talking or just comforting, that's a wonderful thing.” Yes, prayer remains an important message of comfort and encouragement, especially when we are going through a painful or challenging time in our lives. We in our Catholic faith not only see prayer as a means of communicating and maintaining a relationship with God, but we also see prayer as a way of communicating with the community of Saints. As I was writing this homily in the rectory, I walked over to my foyer and saw all the images of the saints that I have there: statues or icons or images of our Blessed Mother Mary, St Damien of Molokai, St Francis of Assisi, St Joseph, St Michael and St Gabriel the Archangels, and St James the Apostle. A lot of us in the Catholic faith see our relationship with the saints as something as real and tangible. The saints have a real presence in our lives; it is not just something we imagine.
Think about when we are searching for a job, when we are taking a test, when we have a crisis or an illness going on in our lives in the life of a family members, when are feeling unfulfilled or lost or confused on our journey through life. In those situations and in many other situations in our lives, we ask others for prayers and best wishes, not only from family and friends, but sometimes from people we barely know. Why is that? Perhaps we feel solidarity in the presence of others in our lives, even in the presence of their prayers. In the prayers of others, in the prayers of the saints that accompany us on our journey as we unite our prayers to theirs, we realize that we are not alone on our journey, that we are a part of something bigger than us, something eternal that is beyond our life here on earth. We journey with the community of saints, with our brothers and sisters in the faith. As our reading from the first letter of St John tells us, we are all children of God, we are all part of one family. As we celebrate All Saints day, we recognize those members of God’s family we have entered eternal life with him, who are a part of the community of saints in heaven. We recognize not just those saint who have been officially canonized as saints by the Church, but also all the faithful departed who are in union with God in eternal life. May we be consoled and encouraged by the vision of the multitude that St John has in the book of Revelation. As our prayers unite with the prayers of the community of saints today, may we feel their presence with us.
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