Why Can’t I Do What The Saints Have Done?, All Saints Day, November 1, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
All Saints Day 2022
November 1, 2022
Rev 7:2-4.9-14, Ps 24, 1 Jn 3:1-3, Mt 5:1-12

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The text that guided the homily was: 

• This is a feast about the whole point of human life. We’re made for heaven, 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 multitude who have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” as we heard in today’s first reading, and brought those white baptismal garments “unstained into the everlasting life of heaven,” like they were instructed to do on the day of their baptism. These are the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation,” who have not just been called “children of God” through baptism, as St. John told us in today’s second reading, but have lived as children of God throughout their lives. These are the ones who as we prayed in the Psalm have longed to see God’s face, whose hands were sinless, whose heart was pure, whose desires were not for vain things but for the things of God. These are the ones who have ascended “the mountain of the Lord,” the eternal Jerusalem, and who “stand in his holy place.” 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 and holiness are always a gift of God beyond anything we can merit, but God out of love has made heaven the result of our choice, the result of our acting on that longing. 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, 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 many 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 chosen true happiness, holiness and heaven. Today we recall their example and invoke their intercession so that we might follow their good example.
• In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks to us about how to follow him on the path that will help make us holy as he is holy, to love as he loves, to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. The path that he shows us stands in stark contrast to the path that most of the people in the world believe will lead to human happiness and fulfillment. Jesus’ words present us with the choice on which our lives hinge.
  • 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 that bo be happy, we have to have all your sexual fantasies fulfilled and our culture promotes promiscuous playboys and 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 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 declares, “You’re happy when everyone considers you nice, when you don’t have an enemy in the world,” while 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.
• These words of Jesus are indeed very challenging and, to worldly ways, very strange. Jesus exalts those whom the world generally regards as weak. He basically says to us, as John Paul II once said to young people 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 himself 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, 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 the blind guides of the world. 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 say no to the seductive claims of the world, no matter how sensible or attractive they may seem.
• This year marks the 400th anniversary of the canonization of someone who shows us how to make the choice for Jesus, the choice for holiness, the choice for eternal happiness in heaven. St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, was a very vain Basque soldier seeking worldly honor on the battlefield. In the Battle of Pamplona, however, he had his right leg shattered and left calf torn off by a cannonball. To pass the time in what would turn out to be a nine-month convalescence at his family’s castle, the only option for him — centuries before modern media — was reading. He tried without avail to get his hands on the epic tales of chivalry and romance common to the epoch. The only volumes to be found were a life of Christ and a book on the lives of the saints. In desperation he began to read them — and not only were his heart and the direction of his life changed, but also the history of the Church and the world. He was pierced by his own shallowness compared to the saints’ substance and roused by the courage of the martyrs in fighting the good fight on the battlefield that mattered most. In contrast to his vain pursuit of earthly honors, their seeking and seizing the most lasting and valuable treasure captivated him. After reading about Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic of Guzman, the 13th Century founders of the Franciscans and Dominicans respectively, he asked one of the most important questions in history: “These men were of the same frame as I. Why, then, should I not do what they have done?” Led by their example and many graces, St. Ignatius made the commitment to serve the true King and to sacrifice everything to extend the kingdom of God. It’s important for us to raise the same question God inspired him to ask after encountering the lives of the saints. Ignatius, after all, is of the same frame as we, with virtues, vices and 46 chromosomes. Without the help of cannonballs and orthopedic surgeons, why can’t we do, why shouldn’t we do, what he has done? Why can’t we do what Francis and Dominic, what Therese of Lisieux and Teresa of Calcutta have done? Why can’t we — why can’t you, what can’t I — become a saint, by trusting in God, availing ourselves of the means of sanctification he gives us, and follow Jesus and the saints all the way to the place where the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation” sings forever “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb?”
• As we prepare to receive in Holy Communion Jesus Christ himself, the source of all holiness, we ask the intercession of all the saints, so that we might become men and women who are living signs of true Beatitude and so that the work of sanctification he has begun in us might be brought to the fulfillment on the day of Christ Jesus! The Holy Spirit through St. Paul told us, “This is God’s will for you: your sanctification” (1 Thess 4:3). On this All Saints Day, we respond to God with confident prayer and filial cooperation saying, “Thy will be done!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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