All Saints' Day

If you take the time to survey the long line of the saints who have been formally named in the Church's calendar, as well as take the time to contemplate those whose names are known to God alone, you will find a diversity and variety of people – men and women - breathtaking in range; all sorts and types and conditions. This is tremendously encouraging – a source of hope for us all; we who feebly struggle while they in glory shine.

So on the Solemnity of All Saints, as we contemplate those both named and unnamed who have won the eternal crown of glory, what do they have to say to us, the pilgrim people of God, at the atrium of the Third Christian Millennium?

If there is one thing that shines in the lives of the saints it is that they came to know their need of God. Here is the very heart of the matter - not only for them, but also for us - for Christians in every age - a recognition of our deep need of God. 

In a world of fragmentation and increasing confrontation; where confusions and anxieties abound; and where there is much fear about the future - where is it all going? Where surfers and seekers abound; here in the lives of the saints, we have sure signposts for the Church in the present and into the future. True, they speak to us from the past; however, it is not a past which is over and done with. We must have a renewal of our understanding of the Church - not simply as one organization or institution among others, but rather the Church as the Body of Christ - encompassing, embracing the whole company of the faithful in heaven and on earth, where life today is to be lived and understood in the context of life eternal; a larger, catholic vision, which in drawing out the past into the present gives us the courage and the confidence to move ahead into the future.

Here in the saints is not simply a roll call of past heroes. Rather they are our brothers and sisters; they are with us on the way - alongside us as companions and guides, sustaining us with their prayers and guiding us by their example. And it is here in the celebration of this holy and awesome mystery of the Eucharist that in those words of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, "You have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and countless angles in festal gathering, and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect..." (Hebrews 12:22-23). What a contrast to that dull, humdrum, committee-bound, functional view of the Church which all too frequently we can experience and which is never likely to inspire or convert anyone to see the Lord and experience His mercy and love.

We desperately need to recover this vision of the Church which is God's and not ours; where yes, we recognize readily the brokenness and sinfulness of our frail humanity – knowing our need of God - yet at the same time rejoicing in the abundant mercy and grace of the God who in Christ has come among us and alongside us; who calls us to holiness, and whose Holy Spirit is already at work in and through each one of us who gather for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, for transformation and conversion; to dust off all our feebleness, frailty and sinfulness and experience the power and presence of Jesus.

One of the ways in which so many of the saints are honored in their search for God is in their scholarship - saints as scholars, disciples in the school of Christ. They have immersed themselves in the Sacred Scriptures, in that reflective, prayerful reading of the sacred text; that Word of God "sharper than a two-edged sword ... discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart;” that Word, "which is a lantern to our feet and a light to our path." They were faithful to the teaching authority of the Church and immersed themselves in sacred Tradition. 

The real challenge, of course, is in our own lives - each and every one of us, that we shall so seek to ground and inform ourselves in the Truth of the Gospel. There is today a vital need for catechesis, for teaching, for learning as a dimension of Christian discipleship to which we all need to attend. What do I believe? Why do I believe? What difference do my Catholic beliefs make in my life, my decisions, my friendships and relationships, my whole way of truly being a disciple of the Lord? 

Saints as signposts for the Church, saints as scholars, and now saints as fools for Christ – whose foolishness is the folly of the cross, the scandal of our crucified Lord. For many of the saints, their style and way of life has challenged all of us. Again, it was those priests, religious and lay people, often derided as simpletons and fools by the governing class of the day, who in the wake of God’s call in their lives, deliberately chose to go out into the desert wastelands of the sprawling towns and cities, where poverty and oppression were rife, not only to bring people the splendor of the liturgy, but in and through the sacramental life of the Church, to nurture in them and for them something of the splendor of their own humanity. 

And it is this call and its fulfillment in the lives of the saints which we celebrate today - a feast which certainly confronts the mediocre nature of our own discipleship - yet in so doing gives us also the means and the courage to go on. It is the call to holiness - to reject the ways of the world and instead opt for the ways of the Lord – and always and inevitably risk is involved - the risk of breaking out and breaking forth into that eternal and everlasting love which is God's - and which by His mercy and grace can be ours also.

The perspective then today must be forwards and onwards. Our forbears in the faith were zealous for the transformation of the world and conversion of sinners. That task remains, and if we are at all to address ourselves to it then we need to recover the full meaning of what it is to be Catholic. As members of the Body of Christ, we are being called to evangelize the vast and increasing number of individuals for whom the Christian message is either of little importance or simply irrelevant.

The thrust of the Eucharist is to go out, to go forth, to love and serve the Lord, to go with confidence and joy in the name of the risen and living Lord Jesus Christ. We must live His risen life, surrounded as we are by so great a cloud of witnesses, and be the instruments of the Lord's love in bringing others to faith; yet all the time keeping alive that vision of the Church which was so dear to those who have gone before us and with whom in the Holy Mysteries we are united in that love which knows no end, that vision of the Church as the Bride of Christ, as a wonderful and sacred mystery: truly a home for sinners and a school for saints.

~ Rev. Fr. Robert T. Cooper, Pastor