Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Agnes Parish, Manhattan
All Saints Day 2020
November 1, 2020
Rev 7:2-12, Mt 5:1-12
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided today’s homily:
- This is a feast about the whole point of human life. We’re made for heaven. We’re created to spend eternity with God in His kingdom of love. Jesus came from heaven to earth to show us the way from earth to heaven. Today we celebrate those people who followed Jesus all the way there, the great and famous saints we know about, and the countless quiet saints, probably many of those who passed on to us the faith, who died in the love of the Lord and now live in His love. These are the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation.” These are the ones who are singing today in that holy place the beautiful endless song glimpsed in the passage from Revelation, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
- “Salvation belongs to our God.” Yes, heaven is always and exclusively a gift of God beyond anything we can merit. But God out of love has made heaven the result of our choice. To get to heaven, as St. Thomas Aquinas said, we need to will it, we need to desire it, we need to choose it. All who get to heaven choose it and all our choices here are earth are forks leading toward or away from God, in which we set our feet on or away from the path to heaven, to God, to eternity. It is a choice between true, lasting happiness and momentary pleasure; a choice between light and darkness; a choice between good and evil; a choice ultimately between life and death. Jesus came down to show how to choose well, and to help us to choose well, but there are competing voices that tell us to choose against what God wants. The saints are those who have chosen well. They are the multitude of men and women, just like us, from every nation and language, who have responded to God’s grace and made it. Today we recall their example and call upon their intercession so that we might follow their good example.
- In today’s Gospel, Jesus gathers us around him and presents to us the way to heaven, the way to happiness, the way to holiness. The path he shows us stands in stark contrast to the one the world tell us will make us happy. Jesus’s words present us with the choice on which our lives hinge. Let’s listen to him with both ears
- The world tells us that to be happy, we have to be rich. Jesus says, rather, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven.”
- The world tells us we’re happy when we don’t have a concern in the world. Jesus says, on the other hand, “Blessed are those” who are so concerned with others that “they mourn” over the others’ miseries, “for they will be comforted” by him eternally.
- Worldly know-it-alls say, “You have to be strong and powerful to be happy.” Jesus, in contrast, retorts, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
- The world says increasingly more each day, “To be happy, you’ve got to have all your sexual fantasies fulfilled” and our culture promotes people like Hugh Hefner and promiscuous, sexy Hollywood vixens as those who have it made. Jesus, however, says “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”
- The world preaches, “You’re happy when you accept yourself,” and espouses an “I’m okay, you’re okay,” brand of moral relativism. Jesus says, though, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness, for his grace and justification, for they will be filled.”
- The world says, “You’re happy when you don’t start a fight, but finish it” and people from professional wrestlers, to MMA champs, to generals, to armchair or back-seat presidents shout “No mercy,” Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
- Our American culture increasingly says, “You’re happy when everyone considers you nice, when you don’t have an enemy in the world” Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” and “blessed are you when people revile you, persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account,” “for their reward will be the kingdom of heaven.
- The words of Jesus may seem very strange to us. Jesus exalts those whom the world generally regards as weak. He basically says to us, as John Paul II once said to young adults in Galilee on the Mount of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are you who seem to be losers, because you are the real winners: the kingdom of heaven is yours!” But in this, Jesus is essentially beckoning us to follow him, because he is the face of the beatitudes, he was poor in spirit, compassionate to the point of tears, meek and humble of heart, pure of heart, hungry for our righteousness, merciful, the Prince of Peace, and persecuted unto crucifixion. His words present a challenge that demands a deep conversion of the spirit, a great change of heart, because so many of us Catholics, don’t really strive to live that way, don’t really make the choices that will lead us to eternal blessedness. All Saints Day is an occasion for us to recognize the two voices competing for our hearts, the voice of the Good Shepherd and the voice of blind guides. Putting one’s faith in Jesus means choosing to believe what he says and to act on it — no matter how strange. And choosing to follow Jesus means choosing to reject the seductive claims of the world and of evil, no matter how sensible or attractive they may seem.
- Yesterday, on the Vigil of All Saints, the Church raised to the altars someone who lived this type of holy life and who helped so many others learn to do so. Blessed Father Michael McGivney, the founder of the Knights of Columbus, was a quiet and unassuming, but hardworking and charitable parish priest in New Haven and Thomaston, Connecticut. He was meek and humble of heart, poor in material things, but rich in God. He mourned over the death of parishioners and sought to console families not just with the faith but with concrete help for widows and orphans. He was pure in heart and saw God in the disguise of those who were hungry, thirst, stranger, out of work, ill, imprisoned and otherwise in need. He was merciful and extended God’s mercy to tens of thousands. He brought peace to families whom the devil was trying to divide. He was persecuted by the anti-Catholic majority in New Haven in ways that would make us today blanch, but he soldiered on with faith and grit and taught parishioners, and Knights, how to do so. More than anything, he hungered and thirsted for holiness and for his parishioners and brother Knights, through unity, charity and fraternity, to live the Christian life to the full.
- Last night I was privileged to be in New Haven and preach at St. Mary’s Church in a prayer vigil for young adults on the day of his beatification. I was asked to focus on Fr. McGivney and the call to holiness. I focused on four steps, which are very much worth pondering today on All Saints Day.
- The first thing he teaches us is that holiness is indeed possible. Pope Francis, in his 2018 exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate on the call to holiness, talked about the “saints next door,” those who “living in our midst reflect God’s presence.” He calls these saintly neighbors the “middle class of holiness.” They’re not flashy. They’re not famous in the eyes of the world during their lifetime. They seem on the outside to be very ordinary. But on the inside the glow with the fire of God’s love for them and their own love for God and others. What I love about Blessed Michael McGivney is not just that he is fellow diocesan parish priest and fellow Knight of Columbus raised to the altars. I love that he is a “blue collar saint.” He wasn’t, and never tried to be, Saint Augustine in the pulpit, Saint Thomas Aquinas in the classroom, Saint John of the Cross in prayer, Saint Vincent de Paul among the poor, or Saint John Bosco raising money. He sought to be Father Michael McGivney. In the midst of his daily prayer, incessant hard work, joys, pains, and service to God and his people, he did his best to unite his entire life to God. He aimed to let God’s mercy and love for him overflow so that his life would become a commentary on the words of consecration, giving his body and blood, sweat and tears, callouses and fatigue, for the salvation of those Jesus died on Calvary to redeem. He teaches us is that holiness is possible.
- The second thing he shows us is how to will holiness, as St. Thomas Aquinas mentions. In the midst of his ordinary life as a boy growing in Waterbury, in seminary both in Canada and Maryland, and in his parish work, he chose to open himself up to the God who can convert five loaves and two fish into a feast for thousands, who can change water into wine and wine into blood, and who can transform ordinary life into something eternally extraordinary. Blessed Michael willed what God willed: his sanctification. And his example shows us how to will it, too.
- The third point John Paul II taught, and Father McGivney exemplified, is that it’s not enough to will holiness “in general.” We must will it very practically. God would never call us to anything without providing all the means we need. John Paul II said that there’s a need “for a genuine ‘training in holiness,’ adapted to people’s needs.” He described six courses in this curriculum: Grace, prayer, Sunday Mass, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, listening to God’s word, and proclaiming God’s word by lips and life. Grace means that everything starts from God who makes possible what he commands. Prayer is not just an exchange of thoughts or words, but a true exchange of persons, in which God comes to abide in us and we abide in him. It changes us and opens us to become an existence-made-prayer. The Mass is the greatest means of sanctification of all, by which the Son of God who is holy, holy, holy comes to make us his dwelling place and to sanctify us from the inside. The Sacrament of Reconciliation brings our souls back to their baptismal splendor and fills us with God’s mercy so that we can pay that mercy forward not just to those who have sinned against us but in all the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Listening to God’s word changes our mind so that we might begin to look at everything more and more from God’s perspective; it changes our words so that increasingly we echo God’s word; it changes our hearts so that we might begin to long for what God desires for us and others. St. Peter said that Jesus had the “words of eternal life.” We could paraphrase and say that Jesus “has the words of sanctification” and the more we know and live those words, the more people will be able to say of us what Gregory the Great said of God’s holy ones, the life of the saints is a living reading of the word of God. And once we really have come to know God’s word, we can’t but share it with others. We become like Saint Paul, who cried out, “Woe to me if I don’t proclaim the Gospel.” We burst to share it in every way, by words and witness. Father McGivney excelled in living all of these pillars as a disciple. He also stood out as an apostle in helping his parishioners, young and old, converts and cradle, Knights and non-Knights, live by them, too. This training in holiness constitutes the meat and potatoes of parish priesthood, to assist God’s beloved sons and daughter in living these six pillars. Every parish exists to be a “vocational/technical training school” for holiness, happiness and heaven. Under Father McGivney, his parishes were schools of sanctity. And he’s praying that your and my parishes will be, too.
- Lastly, Father McGivney imparted a special spirituality to the Knights of Columbus to grow in sanctity. He founded the Knights for three reasons. One was as a benefit society, to care for widows and children whose husband or father was either incapacitated or had died, so that the family wouldn’t be destitute and the children wouldn’t risk becoming wards of the state. The second was to draw men from the secret societies that were seducing them to try to find fraternity and a sense of belonging in activities outside the Church and the domestic church of their home. The third was to have an opportunity to form men to be real men of God, faithful to the Lord, to the Church, to their wife and kids. In forming the spirituality of the Knights to be men who live by faith, he put forward two principles of holiness and eventually added a third: charity, unity and fraternity. We begin with charity. In order to become a Knight of Columbus one needs to be what he called a “practical” Catholic, which means something different than what we today denote by “practicing Catholic.” A practical Catholic is someone who does more than know the Catechism, come to Mass on Sundays on Holy Days and keep the other precepts of the Church. A practical one means one who acts on Jesus’ call to love God with all we are and to love our neighbor like Good Samaritans. A practical Catholic is in contrast to a nominal one. It means a person who lives by faith, by hope and by charity. The fruit of faith must be love for God and others and that’s what Blessed Michael not just taught but lived. He lived it in his care for the sick, his willingness to sacrifice for the poor like for the young orphan Alfred Downes, his daily visits to prisoners like Chip Smith, and his care for his ill and overworked brother priests. He taught it in making charity the first pillar of the Knights. Unity flows from charity. We can’t really love God and love our neighbor unless we take seriously what Jesus prayed for on Holy Thursday night, that we would all be one as he and the Father are one, so that the world may know that the Father sent Jesus and loves just us as he loves Jesus (John 17). The whole Church is supposed to be a sacrament of the loving Trinitarian communion. But we know that the Church is rent by divisions, between East and West, between Catholics and Protestants, between traditionalists and progressives, and so many other ways. It’s the greatest scandal of all. Blessed Michael, as a practical Catholic priest, wanted the Knights to be like a Church in miniature, helping to bring about unity in the Church, and through it unity in society and unity in the world. Everything would begin by responding God’s grace to keep their communion. And that is what leads to the third principle, genuine fraternity. We are our brother’s keepers. Christ came to found a family and by Baptism we become more related to each other by Christ’s blood than I am to my identical twin by genes. We need, however, to live that fraternity. That’s one of the most beautiful things about the Knights of Columbus, of which I’m proud to say I’ve been one for 27 years, as well as founder of a Council in one of the parishes where I was pastor. The Knights are a band of brothers, laymen and chaplains, united not only with each other, and not only with two million brothers on earth in 17 different countries, but also with Fr. McGivney and other deceased Knights we pray are with him among all the saints. It’s a fraternity ultimately with Jesus who took on our nature so that with him we could turn and call God “Our Father.” The Knights of Columbus was founded by Blessed Michael to train Knights in holiness, to make our faith practical, and that means of holiness, and the men it forms, is Fr. McGivney’s greatest legacy of all.
- As we pray today for our country, two days before the election, and specifically ask for God’s help on election day and beyond, it’s important for us to remember how we as Catholics are supposed to be salt, light and leaven in society. This goes way beyond how and for whom we vote. St. Josemaria Escriva once shared an “open secret” that all the crises that the world faces are “crises of saints.” The best way we can love and serve our country is by becoming holy, by becoming men and women of charity, unity and fraternity in the midst of a selfish, divided and individualistic world. The greatest way we can help is by choosing to be men and women of the beatitudes, which provide the remedy to the disordered inclinations that bring persons and nations into decline. No matter what the outcome on Tuesday, Christ tells us today, “This is what I want for and from you: your sanctification.”
- “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness.” Through the Eucharist in which Jesus comes to make us holy, together on this great feast day, surrounded at Mass by all the saints in heaven, that “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1) who are cheering us now on to victory, we ask the Lord help us have that hunger, to have that thirst, that desire for holiness, for living the beatitudes, for saying yes to Christ and no to the standards of the world, so that one day with Blessed Michael McGivney and all the saints we will indeed be filled in heaven forever. Together with St. Paul, all the saints together are shouting to us now, “This is God’s will for you: your sanctification!” (1Ths 4:3). May we will what God wills for us so that we might come to share their eternal joy!
The readings for the Solemnity were:
A reading from the Book of Revelation
Then I saw another angel come up from the East holding the seal of the living God. He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels who were given power to damage the land and the sea. “Do not damage the land or the sea or the trees until we put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” I heard the number of those who had been marked with the seal, one hundred and forty-four thousand marked from every tribe of the Israelites: twelve thousand were marked from the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand from the tribe of Reuben, twelve thousand from the tribe of Gad, twelve thousand from the tribe of Asher, twelve thousand from the tribe of Naphtali, twelve thousand from the tribe of Manasseh, twelve thousand from the tribe of Simeon, twelve thousand from the tribe of Levi, twelve thousand from the tribe of Issachar, twelve thousand from the tribe of Zebulun, twelve thousand from the tribe of Joseph, and twelve thousand were marked from the tribe of Benjamin. After this I had a vision of 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.They cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.” All the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They prostrated themselves before the throne, worshiped God, and exclaimed: “Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power, and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
The continuation of the Holy Gospel according to Matthew
When he saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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