Celebrating All Saints
Celebrating All Saints
By Br. Jerome Masters, O.P.
“Almighty ever-living God, by whose gift we venerate in one celebration the merits of all the Saints, bestow on us, we pray, through the prayers of so many intercessors, an abundance of the reconciliation with you for which we earnestly long. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.”
(Collect for All Saints Day)
In this month of November the Church celebrates all those courageous men and women who have gone before us in this life and have come to their eternal reward. That reward is living in the presence of God in heaven. We know many like St. Augustine, Pope St. John Paul II, and St. Teresa of Calcutta. But there are also many other saints in heaven that we may never know on this side of eternity. But why do we celebrate this day? Is it to celebrate the saints who do not get to have their own special feast day celebrated throughout the year?
We celebrate All Saints Day to remind us of what our goal is in this life—to become saints. The saints are examples of men and women who have gone before us and persevered in their faith. However, there can be a tendency to look at the saints as those who lived a perfect life. This cannot be further from the truth. Granted, there have been saints who lived extraordinary lives, such as St. Teresa of Calcutta and St. Padre Pio. There would be people who would avoid meeting them because they knew that they would need to change their lives after meeting them. But some saints had tremendous conversions to the faith, such as Bl. Carino Pietro Balsamo who killed St. Peter Martyr. Bl. Carino would come to repent of his murder of St. Peter Martyr and join the Dominican Order as a lay brother. There are even saints who we are seeing from more recent times such as Bl. Carlo Acutis that show us heaven is attainable for us living in the modern age.
The saints give us a sign of hope for the joy that awaits us in heaven. As St. Paul says they have run the race and kept the faith. We can see this at the end of the life of St. Thomas Aquinas. Jesus appeared to him and said, “Well have you written of me Thomas, what would you have in return?” St. Thomas replied, “Nothing but You Lord.” Then the heavens were opened to St. Thomas, and putting down his pen saying, “I can write no more. All I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.” The joy that the saints are experiencing in heaven is unmatched by anything we can experience here on earth. Nothing can compare to the joy we will have in heaven. We can live with the hope that one day, when we come face-to-face with our maker, He may say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant, come enter into your master’s joy.”
All Saints Day reminds us of the mission we have here on earth. To become saints. We have a natural desire to be with God for eternity, and the saints who are already in heaven give us hope that we too can be with our Father.