Father Chris – All Saints Sunday 2020 – Homily

“Blessed Are You”
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In many ways, the Sermon on the Mount, is the highest point in Christ’s active ministry, with the Beatitudes his greatest instruction for all humanity, before his sacrificial journey to Calvary. We might wonder: did Christ simply make these profound statements live ‘on-the-spot’, or did he prepare his words ahead of time?
Perhaps when he went to pray through those long nights, he contemplated and organized his thoughts for us in those hours, with help from his Father in Heaven.
 
In any case, Christ would certainly have known the impact the Beatitudes would have on the world. Although the Ten Commandments provide the classic guidance for Christian living, they are mainly expressed in firm, commanding statements; whereas Christ’s Beatitudes deliver their meaning in a gentle manner, complementing the Ten Commandments, showing their intent in further detail.
 
We are mainly taught, not so much what ‘not’ to do, but what ‘to’ do: to comfort others, be merciful, live meekly and humbly, bring peace to disharmony around us. He also promises those who suffer poverty in body and spirit, and those who seek righteousness, will be fully satisfied and beautifully rewarded in the next. Christ was in essence giving us guidelines to become Saints.
 
According to historical records, the first feast to honour ‘all the saints’ was actually an early 4th C celebration of all the ‘martyrs’. Later, in the 7th C, following many invasions of the Christian catacombs, Pope Boniface IV loaded approx. 28 wagons of bones of these martyrs, and buried them beneath the Pantheon, a Roman Temple to the Gods. He would rededicate the temple as a Shrine to the Christian Church.
 
However, this rededication took place in May, when still today, the Eastern Church commemorates the Saints, often during Easter or soon after Pentecost. Although it is not clear to historians and academics why the Western Church celebrates this Feast on Nov 1st, we do know the Anglo-Saxon theologian, Alcuin, and his friend, Arno, Bishop of Salzburg, chose this day, Nov 1st, 800, to celebrate all the Saints.
 
Once Christians were free to worship, the Church honoured other paths to holiness. Such early saints were normally acclaimed by the people themselves, even before the bishop’s final word. This is why many very early saints have strange, even exaggerated accounts about them, though still saintly icons. The first formal canonization took was in 993. But the lengthy process of ‘beatification’, then ‘canonization’, involving the verification of miracles etc., which we know of today, evolved over the past 500 hundred years. In fact, this weekend we are observing the highly anticipated ‘beatification’ of the founder of the KofC, Fr. M. J. McGivney.
 
But it is important to know we also celebrate today the saints living among us. We might even know them personally. So, we must not be like many who thought the saints were odd, or disturbed or even crazy in their own life times.
 
St. John of the Cross was imprisoned in a bare room with only bread and water for
three months by his fellow monks, on the premise he was encouraging too harsh a rule on his own community. Luckily, he escaped. But during his imprisonment he wrote what is considered the greatest triumph of Spanish poetry and mystical thought ever written in their country. After his death, his relics were sought with a frenzy, many prayed earnestly to him for healing and intercession, while others took and treasured his possessions. This was surely all done with good intentions, but there is also something wrong with this picture: too much adulation and devotion for the man, and not enough for what he stood for – his imitation of Christ. Saint Francis once said, “Don’t imitate me, imitate Christ. He is the original.”
 
Thomas Merton was struggling with what his true purpose in life was, and whether to enter the Trappists, when his friend told him it was obvious – ‘to become a saint’.   
 
Let us learn how to live like the saints from the saints. Read about them. Their lives are entertaining and enriching. Many do not realize this until we pick up a book on them as St. Francis himself did. There are multi-volume sets like Butler’s, Lives of the Saints; Bert Ghezzi’s, Voices of the Saints, deserves its acclaim; Saint of the Day, by O.F.M.’s, Foley and McCloskey, is excellent. Of course, there is internet.
   
Remember: Blessed are those who try to live as the saints, as well as honour them.
 
Rev Fr Christopher Tracey
Saint Joseph Parish
Saugeen Shores, Ont.