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| A few of the saints... |
Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14
Psalm 24
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12
Today we have the joy of
celebrating in the Sunday celebration the feast of All Saints, that blessed
feast when we call to mind the great crowd on men and women who have gone
before us and reign gloriously with Jesus in Heaven. One of the awesome points is
the universality expressed by such a fact: that all are called to Heaven. Male
and female, rich and poor, old and young, regardless of time or place or any
other factor that is found in this world. If you are a human, you are called to
heavenly life, called to be a saint.
In other homilies I’ve mentioned
the fact rather clearly that you and I are called to be saints and from time to
time I hear remarks to the effect that ‘Father, I certainly can’t be a saint!’
My response is simply this: you can and you must, for there is but one fate for
those who are not saints and it’s not a pleasant one. To be a saint is not
necessarily to be a superhero of the spiritual life. Too often when we think of
saints we call to mind those great men and women of faith whose lives are
models of sanctity to which it would indeed be difficult for us to attain. St.
Jean Vianney would survive for days at a time on a few meager bites of old
potatoes. St. Pio of Pietrelcina endured the wounds of the stigmata for some 50
years. St. John Paul II was shot in an assassination attempt and them went to
forgive the shooter personally. St. Francis of Assisi in his zeal to strip
himself of all earthly things began to give away his possessions and when
confronted by his father who said, ‘You cannot give everything away, for that
tunic was purchased with my money!’ stripped himself naked in the middle of
town and went away to go find some scraps of cloth with which to make a new
wardrobe. Now, I’m pretty sure we’re not called to strip naked in town at this
point, that was presumably one of those events that just had to happen once in
the life of the Church to mark it off the list. I mean, we’re going to be in
Heaven for eternity, it’s good to have a great store of stories to fall back on
to tell! But more seriously, those are the images we often recall when we think
of saints, but the truth is that for every one of those great saints there is a
great number of humble quiet saints who are enjoying the fruit of a life lived
well, though not notably. Is this not what we profess in our faith?
As I was driving around the area
blessing graves this weekend I noticed the great many cemeteries in the area –
family cemeteries, public ones, and ones connected to various congregations –
all full of stones marking the faithful departed. How many thousands just in
our little slice of the world have died with the belief that they would be
given the reward of their labors in this life? Are they not saints? I sure hope
they are, or at least on their way!
Regardless of whether one’s life
is a light shining on a mountaintop for the world to see or hidden in the Heart
Christ, the call remains the same: to become saints. And to accomplish this we
look to those who have gone before us as models and intercessors. The prayers
of the Mass remind us of these realities over and over. They are models for us
to follow, images into which we look and discern how we might imitate them.
Here is the beauty of the universality of the saints in Heaven – that there’s a
patron saint for anything and everything you can endure in this life. Are you a
teenager (most of us here aren’t) but there’s a patron saint for you – St.
Maria Goretti, whose relic happens to be here on the altar today. Do you like
shooting handguns? There’s a patron saint of handgunners, St. Gabriel of the
Sorrowful Mother, who is also here on the altar. Do you suffer from headaches?
St. Teresa of Avila is the patron saint of people who suffer from headaches.
Did you know there’s a patron saint of the internet? True story. It’s St. Isidore,
who happens also to be the patron saint of farmers. Maybe the Church in her
wisdom is subtly telling those who spend much time on the internet to go
outside and play in the dirt once in a while? These and others are the ones who
have walked the paths before us and provide us a model of how to live and can
intercede for us on account of their special connections to us. Just as we’re
attracted to people with whom we have things in common, so it is with the
saints. And not just that – there are saints we can pray to as patrons of our
parish, diocese, ones whose feast lies on our birthday, baptismal day,
confirmation, wedding, children’s birthday and more. Saints all over the place!
And rightly so. It’s the normal course of the Christian life to become a saint,
Pope Francis reminds us, but it is a course that must be chosen. And here is
the key to everything: choosing.
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| St. Paul of the Cross |
The closing line of the reading
from Revelation that we heard noted the great crowd before John, saying of
them, “These are the ones who have survived the great distress; they have
washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” They survived
the great distress. In other words, they bore the cross God offered to them.
They knew that the cross of Jesus was His throne of glory and their own crosses
were the ladders to heaven and they rejoiced to climb them. This is how to
become saints: by accepting what comes our way from Christ in such a way as to
turn it into our glory. To do all things for love of Jesus. And if you struggle with carrying your cross, St. Paul of the Cross founded the Passionist Fathers, whose community shows us the joy of the cross - he's here on the altar too. Pray to him. Pray to all of them. Pray that we can become the saints we’re called to be.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray
for us.
St. Joseph, pray for us.
St. Ann, pray for us.
St. Vincent de Paul, pray for us.
All you holy men and women, pray
for us.
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