Solemnity of All Saints (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, October 31, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Solemnity of All Saints (A)
October 31, 2020

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

This was the text that guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday on All Saints Day. Jesus came into the world in order to restore us to the image and likeness of God, who is holy, holy, holy. He came to make it possible for us to respond to his command, “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” He came to strengthen us to become perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, merciful as he is merciful. Saint Paul tells us, “This is God’s will for you: your sanctification.” And so the Solemnity of All Saints is our annual reminder of the purpose God created us, redeemed us, sent the Holy Spirit to us, founded the Church and more.
• On All Saints Day, we celebrate those people who have followed Jesus all the way, 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. We also hope that one day, we will likewise be remembered on this feast, numbered among them. To get to heaven, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, we need to will it, we need to desire it, we need to choose it. 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; between light and darkness; between good and evil; ultimately between life and death. Jesus came down to show us the way 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. On All Saints Day we recall their example and invoke their intercession so that we might follow their good example.
• In the Gospel for the feast, Jesus gathers us around him and presents to us the way to heaven, the way to happiness, the way to holiness, precisely so that we choose to follow him on it. The path that he shows us stands in stark contrast to the path that the majority of people in the world believe will make us happy. Jesus’ words present us with the choice on which our lives hinge. Let’s listen to him as if we’re hearing him for the first time:

• 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 their own and 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 spiritually worldly shout 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, 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 boxers, 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.

• “Blessed are you,” the Lord Jesus says, “who are poor in spirit, gentle and merciful, you who mourn, who care for what is right, who are pure in heart, who make peace, you who are persecuted! Blessed are you!” Jesus exalts those whom the world generally regards as weak. He basically says to us, as St. John Paul II once said to young people 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!” Jesus’ words present a constant challenge that demands a deep and abiding conversion of spirit, because so many, including so many of us Catholics, don’t really strive to live this 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.
• On the Vigil of All Saints, the Church is raising to the altars Someone who lived this type of holy life, who heard Jesus’ voice and followed him, and 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. 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 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. He’s praying for all of us that we might live the type of life that will help us live fully in communion with God in this world so that, with him, we may rejoice in God forever.
•  “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness.” Through the Eucharist in which Jesus comes to make us holy, we will gather 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. God bless you.

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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