Today we celebrate the feast of all the saints in the church at one time – all those on general and particular church calendars and those too numerous to be celebrated officially and publically.
The reason we remember them and honor them all today is because it is fitting – and because it is good motivation for us – for want to live excellent Christ-centered lives so that one day we can surely join them in blessedness.
The gospel passage today tells of the lives they led while on earth. They are the ones who – sooner or later – in their own experiences – came to know the immense reality, significance and truth of the fact that the life of beatitude is the life of lowliness, and thirst for holiness; and being merciful and a maker of peace; of being pure hearted and being ill-treated even to the point of death – all for the sake of God and his will and the coming of his Kingdom.
We are just as eligible as any of them to be saints – if we keep responding to God's love for us with faith, with hope and with an active and lively charity towards all others around us: if our lives, like theirs, are truly rooted in love – God's love!
We thank the saints for laboring for God – for rooting their lives in love, so to give God glory– and we are happy for them that they are now enjoying rest from their labors – and we ask their constant help and protection!
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest, says the Lord.
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