All Saints (2018)

This is one of my favourite feasts.

It speaks to us not only of the depth of God’s love,

but also of its breadth,

love shown in real lives throughout the ages and across the world.

This is the day to give thanks for,

and recognise the companionship of, that

huge number, impossible to count,

of people from every nation, race, tribe and language

who acclaim forever, by their very selves,

the victory won by Jesus the Lamb:

a victory of redemption, reconciliation and resurrection.

This is a day to give thanks for our favourite saints:

perhaps those whose names we have in Baptism or Confirmation,

perhaps those we feel a special affinity for.

This is a day to give thanks for our new saints:

I think particularly of Paul the Sixth and Oscar Romero.

But, this huge number is not just the official saints of the church.

It is all the saints.

As Pope Francis has reminded us earlier this year,

in his letter ‘Rejoice and be Glad’

we are all called to holiness, whatever our circumstances.

If we look in faith,

we see the Holy Spirit bestowing holiness in abundance,

to form what Pope Francis calls ‘The Saints “Next Door”’.

My mother died last November,

so this is the first All Saints day since then.

Tomorrow, I shall commend her, and my father,

who died nearly twelve years ago, to the mercy of God,

but today, I certainly thank God for their steadfast faith,

their seriousness about God, their holiness,

which undoubtedly touched my life deeply.

Along with all the formally canonised,

we also give thanks on this day for the work of God

in those people we have known who have died

and whose holiness affected our own lives;

people who reflected God’s presence for us.

All this holiness is God’s work: the saints insist on this.

Saints have their own personalities,

their own skills, their own circumstances,

but around the throne of God

there is a clarity that can be lacking in this world:

they insist that their holiness, their closeness to God,

is God’s work, God’s victory, not theirs.

Today we celebrate the triumph

of God’s generosity, God’s gifts, God’s grace,

flowing through Jesus to humanity.

As we gather round the table of the Lord, and the altar of the Lamb,

in the company of all the saints,

let us rejoice at the gift of the Spirit of Jesus:

the Spirit that makes holy,

drawing human beings, during life on earth, into the life of God,

shaping them to be, in their hearts, like Jesus.

Let us rejoice in the Spirit of Jesus, radiant in the lives all Saints.