All Saints Day – Sunday, Nov 1, 2020 Holiness & Sainthood: The intersection of God’s goodness and our longings Readings: Revelation 7: 2-4, 9-14 / Psalm 24 / I John 3: 1-3 / Matthew 5: 1-12a
All Saints Day can be understood as a celebration of sanctity or holiness. The saints, certainly, provide good examples in that area. Still, I have heard and perceived how our world tends to demean holiness as something unrealistic or as something for the weak. Perhaps one of the tasks of a day like All Saints Day is to convince us that holiness is within our reach and that we should aspire to it. One of my favorite saints helps us in this quest. His name is St. Francis de Sales and is called the “Gentleman Saint.” He says, “All of us can attain to Christian virtue and holiness, no matter in what condition of life we live and no matter what our life work may be.”¹ In his Incarnation, Jesus Christ comes down to earth and places holiness in human flesh. All that he did and does and all that he gave and gives can be summed up in one word: Love. As a result of such a tremendous gift, humanity is never meant to be the same. The saints we remember and celebrate are real people who show how such a wonderful gift is to be experienced. Saints do not aspire to pedestals that place them on high but are most content when they are able to help us and lift us to greater heights. Saints show us the way of Christ so that we do not get lost or fall into despair. They desire to accompany us, not be considered as unreachable. Perhaps when it comes to the saints and holiness, we focus too much on the little details. God, through his saints, seeks to show us what it is all about: the fullness of life that becomes real when we decide to love. Pope emeritus Benedict XVI expresses it simply when he says, “Christian holiness is nothing other than charity lived to the full.”² The society we live in has a strange tendency to consider holiness as other-worldly or as beyond our reach. When we look at it closely and acknowledge our own longings and hopes, holiness becomes an opportunity for us to discover the possibility of relationship with Christ and rejoice in his closeness. The Lord seeks to place himself and his ways – holiness – within our reach. Hopefully, what he offers us is within our desire. Our salvation is the chief concern of Jesus. Holiness is living our lives like we desire to be saved and, even more important, living our lives like we truly long for Christ and are grateful for who he is and what he does. In today’s reading from chapter 5 of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, we hear the Lord Jesus preach the Beatitudes. They provide us many ways to become holier and practice holiness. The diverse ways provided by the Beatitudes respond to the diversity of people and diversity of opportunities to be like Christ in our day and age. Don’t let the “real world” fool you. The Beatitudes are not about unrealistic expectations, they are about living. Those who are mourning or in a time of grieving know their grief is a reminder that loving can include facing the pain of loss and hurt. Still, we must keep loving. Still, we must be devoted. We know that many are hurt and mistreated and that vengeance only prolongs and extends the suffering. Still, we must merciful and break the cycles of violence and retaliation. We know that there is too much violence and destruction in our time and throughout human history. Still, we must work for peace and remind others and ourselves that we are not created for destroying people or our planet, but for making the kingdom of God more real and more present. To say that the Beatitudes are impossible or like fantasy is to allow our souls to slip into despair and hatred. Christ has never given up on humanity, but rather gave his life for us and keeps doing so in the Eucharist. He has more confidence in us than we have in ourselves. Holiness is being grateful in return. To be holy is to be virtuous. Let’s keep going with that: Hope means you never give up dreaming; faith means we know the dream is not our creation, but what God wants; love means we never stop striving for the dream and we never cease to be thankful to the One who reveals it to us.