The Solemnity of All Saints

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-141 John 3:1-3Matthew 5:1-12

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All Saint’s Day is that Holy Day of the Catholic Church when we commemorate all of our holy brothers and sisters in the Church Triumphant; those known and unknown to us. It is so wonderful and beneficial to know that we have friends in Heaven who are willing to assist us along the same journey that they too processed. The prayers of the Church Glorified are so efficacious because each of them can identify with us most uniquely. They have walked in our shoes; they know our trials, our sufferings, and our temptations. Therefore, we call on them in trust to intercede for us in prayer and to carry our petitions to the throne of God.

In today’s First Reading from Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14, the servant John received a vision of the Holy Mass across the span of centuries where he saw “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.” It is clear here that vision that John was given a Palm Sunday Mass, with the faithful holding out palm branches during the procession. The text then says they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.” In this next part of his vision, it sounds like the servant John heard the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, which would have not been heard during Lent, but sang aloud on Easter Sunday.

At the end of this portion of John’s vision, he says one of the elders spoke up and said to me, “Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?” John replied, “My lord, you are the one who knows.” The elder then told him, “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.” This vision of the holy and pure saints in Heaven that the servant John saw is a fulfillment of what is written in today’s Second Reading from First John 3:1-3; that “We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.”

I believe that the words
Tertullian in his Apology (197 A.D.), offers a powerful image of the time our
saints spent on earth during these periods of great distress:

“Crucify us, torture us, condemn us, destroy us! Your wickedness is the proof of our innocence, for which reason does God suffer us to suffer this. When recently you condemned a Christian maiden to a panderer rather than to a panther, you realized and confessed openly that with us a stain on our purity is regarded as more dreadful than any punishment and worse than death. Nor does your cruelty, however exquisite, accomplish anything: rather, it is an enticement to our religion. The more we are hewn down by you, the more numerous do we become. The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians.”

The clearest path to sainthood offered through the Synoptic Gospels is the one we have by Christ our Lord in today’s Gospel Reading from Matthew 5:1-12. The nine beatitudes are, truly, nine opportunities of grace that we have to attach our mind, body, and soul to the sacred heart of Christ Jesus, and when they these nine opportunities are practiced consistently, they become our supernatural behaviors and our eternal light up that narrow way to Mount Calvary where we will die in Christ, be buried in Christ, and rise in Christ.

The liturgy of the Holy Mass not only offers us a perfect path to
process up to Calvary, but with the hosts of angels and the communion saints
gathered around our sacred space as we adore Him and consume Him, the Mass
shows a foreshadowing of what Heaven wil