Solemnity of All Saints

Readings: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12a

In the late 19th century
the French Catholic writer Léon Bloy
concluded his novel The Woman Who Was Poor
with the line,
“There is only one sadness…
not to be saints.”

But, we might ask,
why should not being saints make us sad
and why would he say
that this is the only sadness?
After all,
isn’t there plenty of other sadness in life—
disappointments in our careers
and creative endeavors,
our love lives
and our friendships:
promotions and recognitions passed over,
failures and broken promises.
Moreover, we do not tend to think of saints
as people who had lots of fun.
Indeed, we tend to think of them
as having become saints
because they were willing to give up
fun things that make people happy,
like money or sex or careers
or, in the case of martyrs, even their lives.
Being a saint sounds to many of us
like a pretty dreary affair—
lots of church and Bible-reading and visiting the sick—
and Jesus in today’s Gospel doesn’t help matters much
when he says that those who are blessed
(which is another way of saying those who are saints)
are the poor in spirit,
the mourning,
those hungering and thirsting for justice,
those who are persecuted for justice’s sake.
This does not sound
like a particularly happy crowd.
We might even ask,
with all due respect to Monsieur Bloy:
given all the potential occasions
for sadness in life,
why increase our sadness
by the pursuit of joyless sainthood?

I probably do not need to tell you
that I think such a view
profoundly misunderstands
both happiness and sainthood.

So, what is happiness?
Our deepest experiences of joy
are when we are doing something and say
“This, this, is what I am meant to be doing.”
We experience joy when we are engaged in some activity
that is so in tune with who we are
that it flows forth from us
with a sense of rightness,
a sense of naturalness,
a sense that this is what we were made to do,
this is who we were meant to be.
It might be joy that we feel in a career,
in which our own particular set of skills and gifts
perfectly match the meaningful task we have to do.
It might be the joy we feel in athletic
or creative pursuits,
when hours spent on the practice field
or in the studio
or at the writer’s desk
yield that moment of victory,
of achievement,
of beauty.
It might be joy that we feel
in friendship or romance,
when the love that we offer
is returned in kind.

But nobody’s life is only their career
or their art
or even their loves.
Our life as human beings is in part distinctive
because we are many things at the same time:
we are doctors or business people or teachers,
while we are also artists and athletes ,
as well as parents and spouses and friends and siblings.
Because we are many things at once,
we find happiness in many areas of our lives.
But we also find sadness,
because the activities that fulfill us
in one area of our lives
might be in conflict with finding joy
in another area of our lives,
as when pursuit of a career
negatively affects our personal relationships,
or we give up our artistic dreams
in order to help provide for our families.
It seems that none of these things
makes us happy in all that we are;
each happiness is a partial happiness.

And even more, we human beings are aware
that each and every partial joy we experience in life
is fleeting,
temporary,
and so fragile
that a small turn of fortune
could take it from us.
An economic downturn
makes me lose that perfect job;
my strength diminishes,
my hands shake,
my mind grows dim,
and I can no longer engage
in my beloved athletic or artistic pursuit;
death or betrayal takes from me
that precious friend or lover.
Part of what it means to be human
is to recognize all this,
and even in moments of intense happiness
to be haunted by the question,
is there something more?
Is there a happiness
that can embrace all that I am?
Is there a happiness
that neither fortune
nor time
nor even death
can sweep away?

There is only one sadness—not to be saints.
Because it is precisely in loving the creator of all,
the one who knows us better than we know ourselves,
that the saints are fulfilled in such a way
that joy can pervade every aspect of their life.
There is only one sadness—not to be saints.
Because the saints are those who have found a joy
that no passage of time or turn of fortune,
no human failure or inadequacy,
and not even death,
can take from them.

Perhaps the life of the saints
strikes us as a sad one
because our notion of “a saint”
is a narrow and moralistic one.
But the saints are not those
who have followed all the rules;
they are not the ones
who have sacrificed all pleasure;
they are not the ones
who have cut out of their lives
everything and everyone except God.
No, they are the ones
who have abandoned themselves
to the wild adventure of being a lover of Jesus,
and have let the joy of that adventure
flow from them
to pervade their every action,
have let that love
infuse all of their relationships.
They are the ones who have found an eternal happiness
that can console us now
in the face of misfortune and disappointment,
and will one day
wipe away every tear in God’s kingdom.

To miss that love,
to miss that joy,
to miss that adventure:
truly, this is the only sadness
that God’s joy cannot overcome.

An All Saints / Wedding Homily

Readings: 1 Corinthians 12:31–13:8a; Matthew 5:1-12a

I’m not sure S______ and J______ were aware of it at the time
but the day that they chose for their wedding
is one of the great feast days of the Catholic Church: All Saint’s Day.
The saints are those who have, as St. Paul put it,
fought the good fight,
finished the race,
kept the faith;
they are those holy ones who have received the crown of glory
and are even now enjoying life in God’s eternal kingdom.
Some of these saints are known to us and named as individuals,
and many of them have special days each year
on which we remember them.
But we believe that there are many saints
whom we do not know,
whom we cannot name,
and so we have this feast day to remember
all of those holy people
who lived out their lives in God’s service
quietly and out of the world’s sight.

Our two readings give us a picture of what it means to be a saint.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells us
the qualities possessed by those who are blessed
and what rewards await them:
they are “poor in spirit,”
meaning that they humbly know their need for God,
they are meek, and they hunger and thirst for righteousness,
they are merciful,
pure of heart,
and peacemakers.
They are the ones to whom God will grant his kingdom:
they will be comforted,
shown mercy,
and called children of God.
St. Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians,
draws all of the virtues of the saints together
into the one virtue of love:
a love that is patient and kind,
that does not seek its own interests,
a love that bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things,
a love that can fight the good fight,
finish the race,
keep the faith.

But how does one become a saint?
Is it simply a matter
of trying really, really hard to be a good person?
While that is, of course, important,
becoming a saint is really something much more mysterious.
It is mysterious because it is something
that God’s grace does to us,
something that is brought about
by the mystery God’s love at work within us.

S______ and J______, today you enter in a new way
into the mystery of God’s love.
In the Catholic tradition we believe marriage to be a sacrament,
meaning it is both a sign and a cause of God’s grace.
In other words, your married life together
will both make God’s love present to you in a special way
and also show that love to those whom you meet.
But even more,
if you open yourselves up to the grace
that God gives you in your married life together,
you can become saints.
Your marriage can make you
into one of those people we celebrate today,
those who in their everyday lives fight the good fight
in the cause of love and mercy.
My prayer for you on your wedding day
is that the years ahead
be filled with joy that comes from God’s grace,
the grace that can transform you together
into the holy ones of God.

Solemnity of All Saints

Readings: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12aIn his Revelation, St. John gives us a vision of the saints in heaven:
“a great multitude, which no one could count,
from every nation, race, people, and tongue.”
This redeemed multitude
worships before the throne of God, crying out,
“Salvation comes from our God,
who is seated on the throne,
and from the Lamb.”
It is a glorious vision of the saints
caught up in the worship of God.
And one of the most striking things about it
is the way in which the saints are envisioned
as being not just in the presence of God,
but in the presence of each other.

Our Catholic tradition tells us
that heaven is an eminently social place:
it is not a matter of the isolated soul
alone with God for eternity.
Rather, part of the joy of the saints in God’s kingdom
is the joy that they feel in being with each other.
St. Catherine of Siena, the 14th century Italian mystic,
wrote that the saints,
“rejoice and exult,
sharing each other’s goodness with loving affection. . . .
For when a soul reaches eternal life,
all share in her good and she in theirs. . . .
They experience a new freshness in their exultation —
a mirthfulness, a jubilation, a gladness —
in knowing this soul” (The Dialogue, ch. 41).
So the great multitude rejoice not simply in knowing God,
but in knowing the incredible varieties of goodness
that God’s grace has made possible in human beings:
the mother rejoices in the martyr’s courage
and the martyr in the mother’s patience;
the pastor rejoices in the scholar’s knowledge
and the scholar in the pastor’s prudence.
The saints bring with them the particular gifts
that God’s grace has poured into their lives
and then they share those gifts of holiness with each other,
so that each may delight in the goodness of others.

In our family there is an All Saint’s tradition that, to me,
embodies this sharing of gifts that we find in the saints.
On the eve of the solemnity of All Saints
our children go (or, at least did when they were little)
from house to house in our neighborhood
while dressed in costumes representing the multitude
drawn from every nation, race, people, and tongue
(you know: pirates, princesses and zombies)
and collect gifts, known as “treats,” from the neighbors.
Perhaps you have heard of such traditions;
your families may even have similar customs.
The highpoint of this traditional celebration of All Saints
has always been the point after the gifts have been collected
and the children gather at someone’s house,
dump out their bags on the floor,
and begin trading:
Kit Kats exchanged for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups;
bars of dark chocolate for bars of milk chocolate;
Circus Peanuts for. . .
well, you might just have to hang on to those.
And what is most remarkable is that,
aside from occasional bickering,
this exchange is characterized by great excitement and happiness.
And it is not just the excitement and happiness
of trading up for better candy,
but it is really the excitement and happiness
of being together with friends
and of both giving and receiving.
To borrow words from Catherine of Siena,
it is an occasion of mirthfulness, jubilation and gladness
as people rejoice and share in the gifts that others have received.
What more appropriate way to celebrate the saints
than to joyfully share our gifts with one another,
for this is what the saints do for eternity.

Last week Fr. Rich spoke about how our financial support of our parish
ought be something that we do not out of guilt, but out of gratitude.
I would go so far as to say that it should be an occasion
of mirthfulness, jubilation and gladness,
because it is a chance to take what God has given us
and to share it with each other.
Both our first and second collections are ways in which
we acknowledge God’s gifts to us
by sharing them with others.
In our second collection we share them with those outside our parish
who are most in need of material assistance,
and in our first collection we contribute to supporting the parish structures
that make our ministries possible:
keeping salaries paid and lights on and boilers heating.
The money we give makes it possible for us
to gather as a community of worship,
to be an image of God’s kingdom,
where the saints cry out in concert,
“Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving,
honor, power, and might be to our God forever and ever.”
Indeed, it not only makes this worship and community possible,
but in the offering of our gifts to God and to each other
we are engaged in an act of worship
and the building up of our community.
We are doing what the saints do for all eternity in God’s kingdom.
So it is appropriate that we do it together.

In a minute the ushers will pass out offertory pledge cards
and I will ask you to fill them out.
You are, of course, free to do so or not:
no one will twist your arm;
God will not spurn you;
the parish will not have to close its doors.
But what if we think of it not as paying our dues or paying a bill
or even making a contribution to a good cause,
but rather think of ourselves as children sitting on the floor
sharing their Halloween candy;
think of ourselves as the saints in heaven
sharing the gifts of God’s grace with each other.
It is an occasion of mirthfulness, jubilation and gladness.
Why would we not want to join in?