Solemnity of All Saints

 Lectionary: 667

See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

Some Americans like to point to their "American exceptionalism." As history's first democracy, a bold experiment which eventually shattered the rule of kings, we have seen ourselves as blazing a path to the future for all the world. After both World Wars, European nations first, and then other nations, adopted constitutional forms of government that emulated the United States. Even Communist countries with their one-party democracies called themselves republics like the US. We were surely God's chosen people.

In this brave new world, Catholics and Christians in the United States struggle to identify themselves within a secular society that feigns indifference toward religion. The faithful and their disinterested neighbors remember persecutions and would rather not repeat those cycles. How do we practice our faith in a suspicious environment? 

Today, the Catholic Church celebrates All Saints Day. Wikipedia offers a detailed history and description of the feast as it has moved around the calendar, and as it's observed by several Christian denominations. 

When I think of the feast I recall that expression from the Letter to the Hebrews, "...we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses..." The author has just completed a long recap about Abraham's "descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the seashore." He says of them, "All these died in faith." They include the well-known Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, and the unknown 

"others [who] endured mockery, scourging, even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, sawed in two, put to death at sword’s point; they went about in skins of sheep or goats, needy, afflicted, tormented. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered about in deserts and on mountains, in caves and in crevices in the earth." 

Then he concludes, 

"Yet all these, though approved because of their faith, did not receive what had been promised."

And finally he comes to his main point, the solemn duty we have inherited: 

"God had foreseen something better for us, so that without us they should not be made perfect." 

Our membership in this cloud of witnesses is both an enormous blessing and a startling responsibility. Without us the hope of our spiritual ancestors will be frustrated. 

No one should expect privileges in this fellowship unless they are willing to pay the price. In this case, that involves fidelity to our mission, courage, and integrity. We must be what we claim to be; we must be worthy of our inheritance. We should not expect an appreciative society to welcome our witness or accept our prophetic challenge. At best, we can expect they'll build monuments to honor the prophets they despised. 

The Feast of All Saints encourages us to remember our heroes and not the heroes of the societies in which we live. Our saints were flawed human beings like us. Saint Paul was not exaggerating when he declared, 

"For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective. 

By our fidelity today we perfect those who have gone before us. They include not only the great saints but the parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents whom we knew as sinners. Remembering their flaws we can appreciate how the Holy Spirit moved in them. We can recognize how the same Spirit has gathered us into their company, drawn us to prayer, driven us into penance, and sent us to demonstrate the same courage, concern, and holiness. 

We enjoy a privilege the world around us cannot imagine, and despises when they hear of it. That is our communion with the saints past, present, and future, and our endless union with God, whose Spirit has not been ineffective even in us who are still on the way! 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.