All Saints – Readings: Rev 7:2-4,9-14; 1 Jn 3:1-3; Mt 5:1-12

The Saints, Filled with the Love of God

Today’s Feast is an invitation to reflect on the common call to holiness (“qadoshà”), a Hebrew concept meaning being separated, set apart for God. But let us immediately get it out of our heads that holiness is the reward of human efforts, of a voluntaristic obedience to precepts and rules, of legalistic adherence to heroic lifestyles. Holiness is a gift from God: holiness is being filled with God, it is being invaded by Him. It is letting oneself be filled with His love, so as to overflow joyfully to our brothers and sisters. “The Church is holy, inasmuch as the most holy God is her author; Christ delivered himself up for her, to sanctify her and make her sanctifying; the Holy Spirit vivifies her with charity… Holiness is the vocation of each of her members and the purpose of all her activities… The holiness of the Church is the fountain of sanctification for her children who here on earth all recognize themselves as sinners, always in need of conversion and purification” (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 165).

Benedict XVI, during the Vigil of World Youth Day in Cologne, affirmed that those we call “saints” are none other than men and women who let themselves be “reached by the light of Christ”, who therefore “show us the way to become happy”, thus bringing about “the true revolution, the decisive change of the world”: “It is the great multitude of saints – known or unknown – through whom the Lord, throughout history, has opened the Gospel before us and turned its pages; he is still doing this today. In their lives, as in a great picture book, the richness of the Gospel is revealed. They are the luminous path of God that he himself has traced and still traces throughout history. My venerated predecessor Pope John Paul II beatified and canonized a large multitude of people from distant and recent eras… The beatified and the saints were people who did not obstinately seek their own happiness, but simply wanted to give of themselves, because they were reached by the light of Christ. They thus show us the way to become happy, they show us how to be truly human persons. In the events of history, they were the true reformers who so often raised it up from the dark valleys into which it is always in danger of sinking anew… Only from the saints, only from God does true revolution come, the decisive change of the world… The true revolution consists uniquely in turning unreservedly to God, who is the measure of what is just and at the same time is eternal love. And what could ever save us if not love?”.

Today’s Gospel (Mt 5:1-12) highlights this dynamic: it is God who fills us with his love, thus introducing us into the joy of his Kingdom: defined by Jesus as “blessed”, that is, filled with divine love (“makàrios” derives from “makàr”, an ancient term indicating divine happiness), are the poor, the afflicted, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted for the sake of righteousness. To be holy, that is, filled with the love of God, one must therefore take the side of the Lord’s favored ones: the least, the marginalized, the oppressed. It is indeed these whom God “sets apart for himself”: those who, stripped of all wealth and power on earth, have entrusted their “salvation to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (first Reading: Rev 7:10). To them God promises his Kingdom and all happiness. Holiness is therefore not only an interior attitude, but a clear choice of allegiance: the choice of the poor, to whom Christ entrusts the task of welcoming us into Paradise: “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, they may welcome you into the eternal dwellings” (Lk 16:9).