Homily
Solemnity of All Saints
Christ the King Parish 2013
1 November 2013
Daily Readings
Audio
All Saints is the celebration of our Catholic superheroes. It is a favorite thing for kids to dress up as their favorite superhero for Halloween. I always always get asked by kids who my favorite superhero is. Adults too get into Halloween . . more and more . . although adults trend toward something new and outrageous rather than to superheroes. Still, Halloween is a time when we transform ourselves for a few hours through a costume into someone or something we are not. Halloween at its worst is of course a celebration of the occult, something we should not play around with whatsoever, for evil is always to be avoided. But at its best, Halloween is a preparty to the Solemnity of All Saints, a celebration of our superheroes, and a reminder that we are all to transform ourselves, not throught costumes, but from the inside out, into saints.
We all have our favorite saints . . Mother Teresa . . . John Paul II who will be canonized on April 27th . . . St. Francis is moving up the charts alongside the popularity of the new pope. We all have our Catholic superheroes we would long to be more like. Today is a celebration of them . . that is is possible to become holy in so many ways; to be precise, by becoming not somebody else or superhuman, but to become fully who we are, who we are meant to be. There are the canonized saints, and yet today we celebrate all those holy people in our lives who teach us how to keep faith in Jesus' beautiful promises, how to fulfill his command to love others just as he first loves us, and to love the kingdom of heaven above all things and to bring it to earth. We celebrate our grandparents, moms and dads and friends, and the invisible army of saints that is as much our Catholic family, and is as present to us at this moment, as is the person sitting right next to us.
The Solemnity of All Saints reminds us that the company of saints, starting as the Book of Revelation tells us with 144,000, but then growing to a multitude too many to be counted, are like the stars in heaven. Pope Benedict calls the saints Christian constellations . . and new ones being formed all the time. The saints are those who teach us how to love heaven above all things, to make the achievement of heaven the greatest adventure of our lives. So much more important than finding the right costume for a day, is the reminder Halloween gives us to enter into that adventure that is the transformation and conversion and redemption of souls and minds and hearts into the people we were meant to be, and to never give up on that. Saints show us precisely how the impossible is possible - that through God's grace we need not become a superhuman, but only fully human . .. to be a saint is only to go deeper into the mystery of who we really are. This begins as St. Paul tells us, by acknowledging that we are God's children now, but what we shall later be is so much more - more than eye has yet seen or ear has yet heard. Saints made themselves available to God for this amazing transformation.
Saints in loving heaven realized that it is there, and only there, that love conquers all things, the love that is self-forgetfulness. There are no calculators or stopwatches in heaven, no comparisons or measurements. The only reality is love, that same love that is the foundation of the most perfect and transcendent moments of our lives. We pass over from earth to heaven whenever we get lost in a reality bigger than us, whenever we throw our own willfulness away, and when we love another in a way that we forget ourselves perfectly. The Ten Commandments are rules for sinners who need to constantly turn toward the things of heaven, towards things that last forever and away from things that pass away. But the Beatitudes that we hear on All Saints days are the rules for saints . . they are the marks of those who love heaven more than they love earth . . the rules for those who allow Christ's perfections to shine through them.
To take nothing away from the great heroes of human history, nor even from our fictional superheroes who change the world for a day, today is a celebration that of all people in human history, the saints are the greatest, and they have changed the world more than anyone, for they have discovered and made present the love of Christ that redeems the world forever, and they have shown man concretely his ultimate dignity as one destined for heaven and his ultimate vocation as one called to love. Our poor world needs so many things, but perhaps most of all, she needs saints . . . lots of them, for saints change the world more than anyone.
We call upon the saints on this great solemnity, those who have finished their race victoriously, but who now hand the baton on to us, for us too to accomplish the impossible, not through our own power, but through the example of Mary, the first and best saint, giving God permission to use our lives for his mission of redemptive love, and to allow his perfections to shine through us into the world. Let us pray with confidence, then, spurred on by this great cloud of witnesses, our Catholic superheroes, who want us to share in their victory.. Oh how I'd like to be in that number, when the saints go marching in. Alleluia! Amen.
Solemnity of All Saints
Christ the King Parish 2013
1 November 2013
Daily Readings
Audio
All Saints is the celebration of our Catholic superheroes. It is a favorite thing for kids to dress up as their favorite superhero for Halloween. I always always get asked by kids who my favorite superhero is. Adults too get into Halloween . . more and more . . although adults trend toward something new and outrageous rather than to superheroes. Still, Halloween is a time when we transform ourselves for a few hours through a costume into someone or something we are not. Halloween at its worst is of course a celebration of the occult, something we should not play around with whatsoever, for evil is always to be avoided. But at its best, Halloween is a preparty to the Solemnity of All Saints, a celebration of our superheroes, and a reminder that we are all to transform ourselves, not throught costumes, but from the inside out, into saints.
We all have our favorite saints . . Mother Teresa . . . John Paul II who will be canonized on April 27th . . . St. Francis is moving up the charts alongside the popularity of the new pope. We all have our Catholic superheroes we would long to be more like. Today is a celebration of them . . that is is possible to become holy in so many ways; to be precise, by becoming not somebody else or superhuman, but to become fully who we are, who we are meant to be. There are the canonized saints, and yet today we celebrate all those holy people in our lives who teach us how to keep faith in Jesus' beautiful promises, how to fulfill his command to love others just as he first loves us, and to love the kingdom of heaven above all things and to bring it to earth. We celebrate our grandparents, moms and dads and friends, and the invisible army of saints that is as much our Catholic family, and is as present to us at this moment, as is the person sitting right next to us.
The Solemnity of All Saints reminds us that the company of saints, starting as the Book of Revelation tells us with 144,000, but then growing to a multitude too many to be counted, are like the stars in heaven. Pope Benedict calls the saints Christian constellations . . and new ones being formed all the time. The saints are those who teach us how to love heaven above all things, to make the achievement of heaven the greatest adventure of our lives. So much more important than finding the right costume for a day, is the reminder Halloween gives us to enter into that adventure that is the transformation and conversion and redemption of souls and minds and hearts into the people we were meant to be, and to never give up on that. Saints show us precisely how the impossible is possible - that through God's grace we need not become a superhuman, but only fully human . .. to be a saint is only to go deeper into the mystery of who we really are. This begins as St. Paul tells us, by acknowledging that we are God's children now, but what we shall later be is so much more - more than eye has yet seen or ear has yet heard. Saints made themselves available to God for this amazing transformation.
Saints in loving heaven realized that it is there, and only there, that love conquers all things, the love that is self-forgetfulness. There are no calculators or stopwatches in heaven, no comparisons or measurements. The only reality is love, that same love that is the foundation of the most perfect and transcendent moments of our lives. We pass over from earth to heaven whenever we get lost in a reality bigger than us, whenever we throw our own willfulness away, and when we love another in a way that we forget ourselves perfectly. The Ten Commandments are rules for sinners who need to constantly turn toward the things of heaven, towards things that last forever and away from things that pass away. But the Beatitudes that we hear on All Saints days are the rules for saints . . they are the marks of those who love heaven more than they love earth . . the rules for those who allow Christ's perfections to shine through them.
To take nothing away from the great heroes of human history, nor even from our fictional superheroes who change the world for a day, today is a celebration that of all people in human history, the saints are the greatest, and they have changed the world more than anyone, for they have discovered and made present the love of Christ that redeems the world forever, and they have shown man concretely his ultimate dignity as one destined for heaven and his ultimate vocation as one called to love. Our poor world needs so many things, but perhaps most of all, she needs saints . . . lots of them, for saints change the world more than anyone.
We call upon the saints on this great solemnity, those who have finished their race victoriously, but who now hand the baton on to us, for us too to accomplish the impossible, not through our own power, but through the example of Mary, the first and best saint, giving God permission to use our lives for his mission of redemptive love, and to allow his perfections to shine through us into the world. Let us pray with confidence, then, spurred on by this great cloud of witnesses, our Catholic superheroes, who want us to share in their victory.. Oh how I'd like to be in that number, when the saints go marching in. Alleluia! Amen.
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