We tend to forget that before Islam took root in North Africa, the Church had flourished there for centuries. One of its greatest lights was St Cyprian who was martyred around the year 250. Here he is preaching about the prospect of eternal life: “How great will your glory and happiness be, to be allowed to see God, to be honoured with sharing the joy of salvation and eternal light with Christ your Lord and God … to delight in the joy of immortality in the kingdom of heaven with the righteous and God’s friends”.
Today we celebrate the solemnity of All Saints. The rest of the year is peppered with commemorations of the individual names we know and love: St James, St Francis, St Patrick, St Mary Magdalene, St Martin de Porres, St Catherine, St Joseph and Our Lady. But on this one day we recognise that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and we try to hold together a picture of all the blessed in Heaven – “the righteous, God’s friends” - most of those whose names we do not know. We are conscious of all those who have gone before us – those who have faced up to death, and now have their full share in the Resurrection as they live eternally in the presence of God. St John in his great Revelation of heaven expresses it like this: “I saw a huge number, impossible to count, of people from every nation, race, tribe and language: they were standing in front of the throne”.
As we look around us at the present state of the world there is so much sadness and so much badness. The media reports day after day make depressing reading - they pull us down, making us question our own humanity – why is there so much that disturbs, that is cruel, that is just plain evil, going on around us? In asking us to celebrate this lovely feast of All Saints, the Church wants us to raise our eyes – to catch a glimpse of heaven – to realise that there is so much more to this life than there appears to be: that unseen, but vitally, vibrantly alive, all around us is another, fuller, dimension, in which we are called to live, and to place our hope.
The Apostles’ Creed speaks about the “communion of saints”. We believe that those who have gone before us in faith and now share in their eternal reward are still intimately bound to us here on earth – they are part of our life – they support us, they intercede for us, they yearn that, one day, we shall see and experience what they now see and experience. They will not rest until their vision is ours. It was Therese of Lisieux who said that she would spend her heaven doing good on earth. Thank God that is what all the saints are doing – good on earth. They are our friends – they are always busy on our behalf. They are our promise of glory.
But the saints in heaven are not just a foretaste of what will be – their experience is also a challenge to each of us, here and now. That same Therese of Lisieux writing about herself as a small child said that even from a very young age she wanted to be a saint. Not “I want my statue in churches all over the world” – not, “I want to be venerated to the ends of the earth”, but I want to be what God intended me to be. I want to fulfil the promises of my Baptism. I want to be holy. I want to be able to say with St Paul: “It is not I who live, it is Christ who lives in me”. “I want to be a saint”. It is something each of us ought to be able to say. It is what the Christian life is all about.
The saints in heaven show us that it is possible to live a holy life on this earth, and to look ahead to future glory. As St John has it: “what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed, all we know is that when it is revealed we shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is”. The example of the saints shows that holiness of life is possible: sanctity is within your grasp and mine. If we really want to become saints, we can. If we really do want to join those already in heaven, we will.
But surely, that is all easier said than done? How can we aspire to sanctity, we who are all too conscious of the ties of this earth and of our own weakness of will? The Gospel we have heard at this Mass opens up the road to holiness. It says, “Do not be taken in by contemporary orthodoxies. Have the courage to judge by the standards of Christ. Dare to be different”. Jesus’ Beatitudes, in St Matthew’s summing up of the Sermon on the Mount, are as radical now as when they were first preached. The poor in spirit, the gentle, those who mourn, the pure in heart, the merciful, the peacemakers – those who are abused and persecuted for the sake of the truth. These are the very ones who have the reward of eternal life. We have an example of what his means in practice before us this weekend. Our bishops call for us to make the Catholic voice heard in the debate on assisted suicide. If we would be saints, then we have to “dare to be different”. Pray God, each of us has that desire.
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