Reflection
Solemnity of All Saints
Have you ever followed the debate over who should be voted into a hall of fame? Writers argue over names, ballots are counted, and only a handful make it into Cooperstown or Cleveland. To be inducted, you must have done something better than nearly everyone else.
All Saints Day works the other way around. In today’s first reading, John sees “a great multitude, which no one could count.” No committee could count them either! Certainly, the Church canonizes holy women and men for us to pray with and learn from. However, today’s feast reaches far beyond that list to everyone God has welcomed home.
When Jesus names the blessed in today’s Gospel, he doesn’t begin with achievement. He begins with the poor in spirit and those who mourn, and he ends with the persecuted.
It is hard to picture any of them winning a hall of fame ballot.
Dorothy Day understood this. For nearly fifty years she lived in the Catholic Worker houses she helped found in New York, sharing soup and a roof with the people society preferred not to see…the crucified of today. She had little patience for anyone who tried to make her look holy. “Don’t call me a saint,” she said. “I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.” Her cause for canonization is now open, so in a sense she is still on the ballot. She would probably find that funny!
When we polish the saints into statues, we let ourselves off the hook.
The saints got tired and made mistakes, and by God’s grace they kept showing up anyway. That alone is an example for us.
So, take a moment today to remember the saints in your own life who will never be canonized. Tomorrow, on All Souls Day, we will pray for them by name. Today, we thank God for them.
As the second reading reminds us, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.” By God’s grace, we too will one day stand among that great multitude!
