Homily for the Solemnity of All Saints’
If you’re following the Mass word-for-word today on the Mass sheet, there’s a
mistake in the Eucharistic Prayer. They’ve printed Eucharistic Prayer I, which
is perfectly fine and valid, but they must have copied and pasted it from either
Easter Sunday or Divine Mercy Sunday. I can tell that because there are
special inserts to be used during that time, including where the paragraph
begins, “Celebrating the most sacred day of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus
Christ in the flesh”. So I’ll be using the normal form of Eucharistic Prayer I
instead. But it’s a good link into today’s solemnity, because Christ’s victorious
Death and Resurrection are what we celebrate in the lives of the saints in
heaven. It is through Him that they have achieved their place now in glory.
The saints, as we know, are not just there to be looked at on pedestals. They
are examples to us, and they also pray for us, and we can ask for their prayers
too. There are so many of them that if we study their lives, we can find those
with similar personalities to our own, and similar struggles to ourselves. Most
of them might not have had to face the frustration of automated systems where
you can’t speak to a human being, or had to put up with a slow internet
connection, but they may well have had to deal with people they found
irritating and/or boring, and also had to deal with possible humiliation when
other people put them straight. The saints are human, with real personalities,
real struggles, but also showing us that God is real and that He can work in our
lives as well.
In the second reading, St John reminds us that we are children of God, and how
great a thing it is that we are not just called children of God, but we actually
are! But since we are, it logically flows that we have to live up to that. That’s
where the challenge lies. But it’s also where we can draw encouragement from
the saints.
Sometimes, though, reading about how good the saints were, can make us feel
a bit down when we look at how we are doing. But the saints had their faults
too. One of the more famous ones concerns St Nicholas. As bishop of Myra,
he took part in the Council of Nicaea, which ultimately put together the first
part of the Creed we say at Mass, affirming the divinity of Christ. One of the
bishops gathered there was the heretic Arius, who believed that Christ was not
divine, but just a very good created being. The story goes that, in the midst of
all the discussions, St Nicholas got so sick and tired of Arius that he punched
him! St Nicholas was put in the dungeon for a while and admitted his fault,
whilst not, of course, agreeing with what Arius had said.
It’s sometime said that saints are sinners who know their need for God, and
that’s also part of the first beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven”. It’s not saying that we have to be miserable all the
time, but instead it’s about recognising our human frailty, that everything we
have is a gift of God, and our achievements and our growth in virtue are down
to Him – without Him we are really going to struggle. But God is on our side.
He is willing to lift us up. So we turn to Him in confidence.
We also turn in prayer to the saints, and to Our Lady, who is the best of all the
saints. Just like we might ask someone to pray for us if there is something that
concerns us, such as if we are awaiting test results, or we’ve got a big exam
coming up, or a job interview, in the same way we ask the saints, as people
both literally and also spiritually closer to God, to intercede for us as well. But
because there are so many of them, how do you choose which one to pray to?
Some have a liking for a particular saint or saints, or it might be that a certain
saint is patron of your particular cause. If you’re stuck, Our Lady is always a
good choice; as I say, she is the best of all the saints, but the apostle St Jude,
whom we celebrated last Wednesday, is patron saint of hopeless causes, so he
might be a good choice as well, even though I guess his inbox is regularly full.
Christ lived on this earth, died on the Cross, and rose to new life, and now,
through baptism and all the sacraments, we are called to share in that new life.
That is what holiness is all about, and that is what being a Christian is all
about. You probably remember me quoting St John Vianney, who said that the
saints did not all begin well, but they all ended well. That gives us hope too.
Maybe a conversation-starter after Mass could be: which is your favourite
saint or saints? We all need their prayers. We can’t expect to make this journey
alone.
Curious about exploring things further? If you would like to ask further questions about the topics raised in these homilies (or maybe think it wasn’t explained too well!), please feel free to e-mail Fr Michael at stjoseph.thame@rcaob.org.uk