Homily for Saturday, 1 November 2014– Solemnity of All Saints

Readings of the day: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; Psalm 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12a

Who are saints? Has anyone here ever thought that there may be many more saints‒ people who have entered heaven‒ than our Church has officially named, or canonized?

Here are some figures on saints: From the year 1000 to 1978, when John Paul II became pope, “fewer than 450” saints were canonized. St. John Paul II, ordained a priest on the Solemnity of All Saints 68 years ago today, alone canonized over 480 saints and beatified 1 300 more people in his 28 years as pope. There are more than double the canonized and beatified people (those declared “blessed,” with one more attributed miracle needed to be canonized a saint) now than before John Paul II became pope. And those are just the named saints. They are more than the number of days in the year on which we Catholics celebrate saints.

Fortunately we have this Solemnity of All Saints on which we celebrate literally all saints, those named and unnamed. This, I think, is our Church’s way of saying that there are many more saints than those we formally recognize and canonize.

This is not some strange idea. Our readings for today resonate with this sense that there are many saints, officially recognized or not. Some saints (for the first few centuries of Christian history these were all the saints recognized) are martyrs; those who have given their lives for our faith. Our first reading, from Revelation, speaks of these saints, courageous witnesses to Christ whose “robes” have been “washed in the blood of the Lamb.” Our second reading includes all people who have lived with the purity of “children of God,” and in our Gospel reading Jesus calls many people “blessed”: “The poor in spirit… those who mourn… the meek… those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… the merciful… the clean of heart… the peacemakers” and those “who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.”

Our Responsorial Psalm is especially inspiring to me because it speaks of all who long for God. We have all prayed here, “Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.” Is this not the first step toward being a saint: To long for the face of God; to desire to be with God for eternity? Do we not all have this desire in some way?

Please allow me to say with confidence that I do not think we would be here if we did not desire to be with God. We all desire to be with God, now and forever. Am I right? We are all called to be saints; called to be among the holy people of God.

There are many saints-to-be here now who live this universal call to be saints, to be children of God who “long to see God’s face,” better than I could ever preach it in words. Our Church and our world have many anonymous saints; I believe more than the saints whose names we know. This, more than just the saints canonized by our Church, is our cause for celebration. This is why we are here on this day to remember All Saints.

Homily for Friday, 1 November 2013– Solemnity of All Saints

Readings of the day: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; Psalm 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12a

When I was growing up in my home parish in Canada, we had a priest who, for several Sundays in a row, started his homilies by asking, “By a show of hands, who here is holy?”

The first time he asked this, almost nobody raised their hands. Gradually, awkward silence and sideways glances in the pews were replaced by raised hands. Eventually, almost everyone in the church raised their hands, even if tentatively.

But I’ll ask the same question of us here, because as awkward as it was in my parish at the time, this question reveals an important truth about us. So who among us is holy? (You don’t need to raise your hands, but just think about this question).

I believe that there is not one person here who is not holy or, put another way, who does not want to go to heaven. This statement is not a denial of sin, or of the reality that we are all sinners. We all act in ways that distance us from the love of God, both individually and socially, but let us turn especially to today’s Psalm response and make the Psalmist’s prayer our own on this Solemnity of All Saints. We said in our Psalm response: “Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.”

If we were not a people that longed to see God’s face, there would be no reason for us to be here. There would be no purpose to this celebration of word and sacrament. There would be no purpose to this celebration of All Saints.

When we think of All Saints, perhaps we think of it as a celebration of those who have died in God’s grace; those whose names are attached to a feast day in our Church calendar; those in heaven by whose intercession direct our prayers to God for various causes. This is all true, but All Saints is a celebration of more than our named saints. Today, we celebrate saints named and unnamed; recognized and unrecognized.  Notably, we also celebrate our common calling from God to be saints; each and every one of us.

We celebrate that we are all holy; that God calls us all to be saints; that we are all sinners redeemed; that we are a people that longs to see God’s face.