Solemnity of All Saints

For almost two thousand years pastors have preached about what we call “the beatitudes.”  These words of Jesus reveal a great deal about him.  As one goes down the list of beatitudes, we have, in fact, people who have fallen through the cracks of human life.  In effect, Jesus is saying, “I’m concerned about these people, too.  They have my compassion, they have my thoughts, they have my concern, and my blessing.”

And so he speaks to his disciples and to us.  He’s talking about the poor, the sorrowing, the lonely, the hungry, the thirsty, the single-hearted, the peacemakers, and the persecuted.  All those people who don’t quite make it in life.  All these people who somehow are basically not “with it,” out of the mainstream.  And yet he says, “This is my concern,” and the implication is that “this is what you should be about as well.”  So, these beatitudes reveal something of the heart and mind of Jesus.

But the scope of God’s concern is even wider than that.  In that first reading, we witness the very grand and panoramic sweep of John’s vision.  He speaks of the countless holy ones – he says 144,000.  Well, of course, the biblical number of fulfillment and perfection is twelve and this says, “Wow, this is twelve times twelve – perfection times perfection.  One can’t count the number of people that are among the holy ones.”

And this in turn reveals something about God as well.  The Feast of All Saints is basically a feast not only of the compassion of Jesus, who is concerned about the marginal, it is about the love of God that is so universal and beyond our wildest dreams that, as the reading says, it has found the way to redeem “people from every race, language and walk of life, perfection times perfection, countless upon countless.”  And so it would seem that among those countless, countless people are those who hunger and thirst, the persecuted, the lonely, the meek, the single-hearted.

It seems, therefore, that as we reflect upon this feast and tend to think only of the great saints and the saints that we have known in our lives, we should not forget to go behind it always.  And behind it is this incredible love of God which is so vast it can collect 144,000 people, and is so deep that it will slip between the cracks and get even the marginal.

So this is a reflection about All Saints.  It’s not just all these wonderful people that we trip off in our litanies.  It is the feast, as every feast is, of God.  It’s a feast of God’s love.  It is horizontal, if you will, and it is vertical.  And the feast of All Saints and the Feast of All Souls, and putting the Beatitudes on this Feast of All Saints, are meant to tell us that truth.

Beyond our wildest imaginings God’s love will find what we could never find, redeem what we would think is irredeemable, and collect what we would throw away – 144,000 from every tribe, countless upon countless upon countless – to the exponent that we could not begin to measure with the most sophisticated computer.

This is the feast of God’s love and, therefore, a feast of hope.  If God’s love is that extensive, and if God’s love is that vertical, if God’s love will go to the marginal and the in-between people, then it turns this feast of great admiration for God, and worship, also into a feast of hope.  So maybe today as we go about our daily business, we just might contemplate how marvelous God’s love is.  How wildly wide, how profoundly deep, how incredibly comprehensive, how wonderful must this God of ours be.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor