Thursday, October 27, 2011

11/1/2011 – Homily for the solemnity of All Saints Day – Matthew 5:1-12a


       In the early Church, when those following the way of Jesus were being persecuted in great numbers, being a saint was synonymous with being a martyr, with giving up one’s life for the faith.  Back in the early fourth century, the Church commemorated a feast to remember all of the martyrs who gave their lives up for the Church.  This feast can be seen as a precursor to All Saints Day that we celebrate today.
         When the Church became legally recognized in Roman society, the definition of a saint was expanded beyond martyrdom.  And as we celebrate the saints of our Church today, we might mistakenly believe that today’s solemnity recognizes only those individuals who have been named official “saints” by the Roman Catholic Church.  But, in reality, today we recognize all of the saints in our community of faith, all who have lived out the faith throughout the centuries and who have passed down the faith to us.  We recognize all who have led lives of faith and lives of holiness, whether they were famous and recognized throughout the world, or whether they lived out the faith in quiet, gentle, humility without any official recognition. 
         When we think of a saint, it is true that we are thinking of a person that lived out a life of holiness, of a person that was true to his faith and true to the way God called out him in life.  But, the saints were not perfect, they were not without flaws.  When it came out several years ago that Mother Teresa of Calcutta suffered from a dark night of the soul and felt abandoned by God for most of the time she ministered to the poor, many people were shocked and scandalized, and thought that it took away from her holiness.  Yet, I think the opposite should be true.  It should help us understand Mother Teresa for who she really was, for all she had to overcome in order to truly serve the Lord.  The saints were very human, with both human strengths and human weaknesses.  All of us as followers of Christ are called to lives of holiness, and we do so in the midst of the nitty-gritty reality of our lives, in the midst of our brokenness and weaknesses. 
         So, when we hear the Beatitudes proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospel today, perhaps we see ourselves.  Perhaps we are the poor in spirit in that we pray for the faith to carry on and to make it to the next day.  We take it one day at a time, and we do what we can to live that day in service to the Lord.  Perhaps we are those mourn, whose love and compassion and empathy goes out to our neighbor who is suffering; whose mourning goes out to those loved ones we no longer have in our lives.  Perhaps we hunger and thirst for righteousness in the midst of all the pain and injustice and violence in our lives.  We yearn for a day when we as a society can put all of this aside, when we can truly say we are proclaiming God’s kingdom here on earth.
         In our humility, in our faithfulness, in our simple gratitude to God, we are to live out these attitudes that Jesus proclaims today in the Beatitudes in the reality of our lives, meaning that we are to make God the source, the strength, and the foundation of who we are.  As we honor the saints today, as we recognize how they are very much a part of our lives, of how we rely on their intercessions, we give thanks to the God for the gift of the saints.  

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