All Saints 2024
Even with a great knowledge and a great imagination, there is not much one can say about heaven. Heaven is beyond our experience. We do not know what it means to see God instead of believing in God and connecting with him as if through a veil. We do not know what it is to be like God, as St John tells us in the second reading: “it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him”. We have no idea of what a life more divine than human can look like.
However, we believe that God is love. Heaven is life within the perfection of divine love. Our own experiences of loving and being loved, though limited and imperfect in many ways, give us some sort of direction. We can think of a life where the best hours of our human loves and friendships become eternal -even if we struggle with the idea of eternity. We can long for it, and in fact, when we listen to our heart, we find a deep desire for something like stable and genuine love. Heaven must be the city of love – or it is not worth thinking of.
Also, we have the saints. The Word of God speaks of throngs of men and women sharing in the life of God in heaven. The Church gives us the names of some of them. We, ourselves, have sometimes had the impression that we have met people who really were sort of saints. These were good, loving, merciful. They witnessed among us to a love coming from beyond this world, they dispensed a greater love, they were possessed by a spark of divine love.
Today we celebrate all the Saints who dwell in heaven. We are glad for them. We feel proud that some of us achieved such a quality of love. This gives us renewed trust in the capacities of human hearts. But there is more. Saints, if we wish, can become part of our life. They think of us. They pray for us. They intercede for us. They draw us into their friendship. They surround us with their care, even if most of the time we are unaware of their attentions.
Heaven is love, divine love filling the hearts of the Saints. Their love cares for us. Their love works at our salvation. Their love invites us: “Become a saint. Open yourself to divine love. Listen to the voice of God calling you to His love. Learn to put God’s love first!” For this is what the Saints were given to do: they gave God the first place in their hearts. They were thus given to go further than many of us on the way of love. They walked with strength and energy the way of the Beatitudes, which is Jesus’ way through the Cross to heaven. Now in turn, they trigger our loving response to God. True, they had an extraordinary love, and sometimes extraordinary lives. It was so that we, too, may trust that divine love and divine grace can achieve much more in our ordinary lives. Such is holiness’ definition according to St John Paul II: “the highest degree of ordinary Christian life”. We would be very wrong to think this is not for us. God loves us. He gives us His grace. The Saints, His friends, are our best friends.