Solemnity of All Saints 2021
1st reading: Rev. 7: 2-4,9-14
2nd reading: I John 3: 1-3
Gospel: Matt. 5: 1-12a
Today we are celebrating the Solemnity of All Saints, including all the unknown saints in heaven. Normally, as you know, we would be celebrating this on Nov 1, tomorrow, but because the date falls next to a Sunday, we have it moved to today instead. We are reminded by the Church that sanctity is within everyone’s reach. There are many more saints in heaven than the number that have been formally canonized. By canonizing a particular saint, which is a very careful and usually lengthy process, we have presented to us by the Church a role model, one for us to seek to imitate.
Like all the saints we too are on a spiritual journey. Everyone seeks happiness, but not everyone seeks for this in the correct way. Even the non-believers seek happiness, although they misunderstand where this is to be found. In the debate between the philosopher Slavoj Zizek and the clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, both non-believers in God yet both agree in a Judeo-Christian ethic, each claim that happiness is not something we seek for. For them happiness is something that somehow just happens when we live lives of a moral uprightness, in some Judeo-Christian sense. But the Christian understanding of happiness is much more profound than this. We do indeed seek happiness, in seeking God. As St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions: “When I seek for you, my God, my quest is for the happy life.” – “vitam beatam quero.” And so in seeking God, we are seeking the ‘blessed life’, the ‘vita beata’. This word ‘beata’ is where we get the word ‘beatitude’ from. Thus the ‘Beatitudes’ which we have just read in our Gospel, form Jesus’ central teaching from the beginning of His great ‘Sermon on the Mount’. They are his instruction on how we journey on the road to happiness or blessedness. In other words, they teach us how to become saints! ‘I will seek you’, continues St Augustine, ‘that my soul may live, for my body derives life from my soul, and my soul derives live from you.’
Man’s ultimate happiness is not in this life. Rather, man’s ultimate happiness is the vision of God in Heaven – the Beatific Vision – the ultimate blessedness. This means that we must continue on our spiritual journey right throughout our lives up to death and then hopefully resurrection to Heaven with all the other saints. The Saints are always keenly aware that our home is not in this world, but in the next. And so they continually place their hope in Jesus, their trust in Him, which we all must do. We must hope and trust in His Divine Mercy.
Does this mean we will perhaps be just miserable in this life until we get to Heaven? This should never be! As we can read clearly and for those who knew her, see clearly, in the writings and life of Sr Mary David Totah – ‘The Joy of God’ (available in our Monastery Shop!) – it is a duty for each one of us to be joyful. Even in the midst of pain and anguish, joy must permeate and shine through our whole being. “Let me tell you about the glory in the miseries of your life”, said Mother Angelica in her witness talk. “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake”, St Paul wrote to the Colossians. Heaven is only for those who are filled with joy. Was Jesus without pain and sorrow on the cross? Obviously not. Was He filled with Joy? He was filled with the joy of the expectation of what His Passion, death and Resurrection would ultimately obtain, the opening of Heaven for us sinners so that we could be eternally happy with Him. He was filled with Joy in His Holy Spirit. “God protect us from gloomy saints”, said St Teresa of Avila! Was Our Lady filled with joy as she stood beneath the cross of her suffering and dying Son? Would she have changed the course of events if it was in her power to do so? Was her prayer to God please save my Son from dying on the cross? She too shared in the knowledge of Her Son’s journey, filled as she was with the Holy Spirit, that He came as Saviour of the World. And this is news of great Joy, as the Shepherds of Bethlehem heard from the Angels. But she was also told by St Simeon of the sword that would pierce through her own heart. She was not without sorrow. ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.’ ‘Not my will, but Thy Will be done’. The two wills of Jesus and Mary are always one. This is the source of joy, despite all suffering, to be one with the will of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit. “Joyful people are loving … forgiving … munificent”, wrote St John Henry Newman. “… Christian joy, the refined joy of the mortified and persecuted, makes men peaceful, serene, thankful, gentle, affectionate, … hopeful”.
I do not mean, in any way, to belittle the pain of suffering. All of us suffer in one way or another. For many it can be extremely intense. But even in such cases, a soul can always be and must always seek to be hopeful, if it is still to experience joy. Suffering is redemptive because in redeeming the world, Jesus also redeemed all suffering. Joy at what? Joy in the expectation of redemption, the same joy that Jesus had on the cross, the same joy that Mary had at that same moment. This requires a great faith, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, which we can pray for. When does redemption happen? It begins here and now and so must my hope and joy be, even if my pain remains. It begins here and now for the soul who trusts in Jesus, for the soul who is keenly aware that Heaven is its home. Therefore, do not miss out on this great opportunity now to become a saint!
Dom Brian Gerard Kelly, OSB