Solemnity of All Saints

See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.

Since the Second Vatican Council and the beginning of this “Millennium of the Laity” All Saints Day has taken on new meaning and the word church has new depth. It’s not just the clergy anymore.

When I was a boy in the 1950’s, church meant either a building or the bishops and priests. Saints were those spectacular individuals, singularly blessed, who were offered to the rest of us mortals as unattainable ideals. They usually appeared in “painted sunshine;” that is, stained glass windows with halos. Their stories, if sappy, were proof of their heroism.

I remember in particular Saint Denis’ window in my parish church. The poor fellow had been martyred by decapitation. So there he was standing in his bishop’s vestments, crosier in one hand and his head – with his miter still atop – in the other hand! Fortunately the artist had the decency not to show his stubbed neck spouting geysers of blood. But I remember my first-grader’s puzzlement at the picture.

Of course, by then the times were changing already, and even Butler’s Lives of the Saints offered more plausible narratives. Stories of saintly infants who refused to suckle on Friday were disappearing from the books. But that new thinking had not yet seeped down to my grade school.

Today’s second reading from the First Letter of Saint John places you and me in the company of the saints. What a wonderful, comfortable place to be! The older I get the more at-home I feel among them, especially as I discover their human foibles. Not every action of every saint was edifying. Saint Jerome was opinionated; Saint Peter, fearful; and Saint Martha, crabby. Hey, I know about opinionated, fearful and crabby.

On this feast of All Saints, I recommend you Google/image “Los Angeles Cathedral Tapestries” and ponder the wonderful images of mortals like you and me. I understand all the models for these pictures were Los Angelinos. Their hands are folded; they look toward the altar; and their entire attention is on the Lord. Each face, relaxed in prayer, is recognizably human. There is nothing pretentious or gaudy about them. They are just folks like you and me, who have given their lives and all their love to God.