Today, we celebrate the wonderful feast of All Saints Day, as we start November as the month of remembrance in the Catholic Church. When we think about the community of saints in the Church, we perhaps think about those believers of extraordinary holiness who are now in enters life with God and who have been canonized as saints by the Church. Among them, we think of St Francis of Assisi, St Therese of Lisieux, St John of the Cross, St Ignatius of Loyola, St Anthony of Padua, and St Catherine of Siena. But, All Saints Day goes beyond the canonized saints in the Church. Today, we pray for all baptized Christians who are now in eternal life with God.
The Gospel we hear each year on All Saints Day is the Beatitudes from the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. While the Beatitudes are sometimes not easy to understand, they are actually a call to holiness. The Beatitudes go beyond the laws that we are called to follow in the Ten Commandments. We are blessed, we are holy, we are fortunate when we follow the code of the Beatitudes that Jesus presents to us today. Through the Beatitudes, we belong to the values of God’s Kingdom. The Beatitudes describe to us a kingdom of truth and love, a kingdom of compassion and justice, and kingdom of peace and reconciliation. Those who live out the Beatitudes live in total dependence on God and on their fellow brothers and sisters. According to the Beatitudes, the poor in spirit are blessed by the way they are aware of their poverty of spirit, of their fragility, of how they need the help and support of God in their lives. The meek and the gentle are blessed, because they react to other with care, compassion, and tenderness. They are constantly looking out for the needs of others. Those who mourn are blessed as well; they will be comforted in their grief and their sorrow from the loving community of brothers and sisters in Christ. Finally, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice are blessed as well. They strive for all to be treated with dignity and respect. They may have to pay a high price to do so, but they are will to do so, even if it costs them their lives.
The Beatitudes express the values of the type of Christians that we are called to be. The Beatitudes express attitudes, not just actions. They call us to holiness, to the holiness that is exemplified by many of the saints we celebrate today. Let us give thanks today on this great solemnity of All Saints. As we celebrate the saints who are in eternal life with God, we ourselves look forward to that day when we too will experience eternal happiness with the Lord. As we pray for the saints, as we honor them in a special way, we are to be assured that their prayers and intercessions are with us as well.
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