HOMILY for All Saints’ 2025
Apoc 7:2-12; 1 John 3:1-3; Matt 5:1-12
Dom Prosper Gueranger, the great liturgical scholar and commentator, wrote concerning this annual Solemnity of All Saints (which we, who come to this Vigil Mass, can happily celebrate on its proper date) that: “Year by year, as the great solemnity comes round, it has gathered from among our former companions new saints, who bless our tears and smile upon our songs of hope.” For this solemnity is first of all a remembrance of all who have gone before us, sanctified by the grace of Christ, and who are now numbered among those seen in heaven by St John: “behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages”, and they attribute their victory to Christ, to his sacrifice, to his blood shed for the salvation of the nations for “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”.
Reflecting on this point, on the work of divine Providence in saving souls and making Saints, the Church’s newest Doctor, St John Henry Newman, one of Oxford’s own sons, said: “He died for us all upon the Cross, that, if it were possible to save us, we might be saved. And He calls upon us lovingly, begging us to accept the benefit of His meritorious and most Precious Blood. And those who trust Him He takes under His special protection. He marks out their whole life for them; He appoints all that happens to them; He guides them in such way as to secure their salvation; He gives them just so much of health, of wealth, of friends, as is best for them; He afflicts them only when it is for their good; He is never angry with them. He measures out just that number of years which is good for them; and He appoints the hour of their death in such a way as to secure their perseverance up to it.”
This kind of providential care, directing us in the ways of salvation, is reflected in St John’s letter when he invites us to “see what kind of love the Father has given to us”. For we are indeed God’s children, and we are invited in this feast, to hope in God, to set our eyes on those who rejoice in heaven, our friends and loved ones, who will include the canonised Saints we venerate and love and emulate, like St Dominic and St Thomas, or St Carlo and St Cecilia, or St Teresa of Kolkata and St Francis de Sales. They, who have gone before us, and who we desire to join at last, now encourage us and cheer us on until we shall feast with them. As Gueranger says, ever so evocatively: “Year by year the appointed time draws nearer, when we ourselves, seated at the heavenly banquet, shall receive the homage of those who succeed us, and hold out a helping hand to draw them after us to the home of everlasting happiness.”
But now, while we remain in this life, we look to the Saints who are holding out their hand to help us, to intercede and pray for us. For this is what it means to speak of the Church as a communion of Saints: The month of November thus opens with the veneration of all the Saints in heaven - the “Church Triumphant” as it is called – and then we remember the faithful departed in Purgatory – the “Church Suffering”, and finally during this month, inspired by St Martin de Porres who cared for the poor and needy of Lima, Peru, we also remember those around the world, and especially in our missions in Jamaica and Grenada who need our help – the “Church Militant”, still struggling and fighting the good fight here on earth. For even as today we hold out our hands in our poverty and need to the Saints, so we remember too those who are poor and needy in this world, who hold out their hands to us, who need our help especially urgently now in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Melissa.
But through the assistance that we give to one another in the Church, whether it be spiritual or temporal help, whether prayers or monetary donations, we are expressing the deep reality of our communion with one another through our union with Christ. For although we have come from every nation and tribe and people and language, yet we are one; we are united in the tribulations we endure in life, but also united in our worship of the Lamb who was slain and yet lives and is victorious; united as children of God our Father who pours out his love and mercy upon us. And today the Saints urge us to follow their example of blessedness, they who were poor in spirit, who mourned, were merciful, pure in heart, hungered for justice, and reviled and persecuted and so on. We follow their example by remaining focussed on Christ in whom the Beatitudes are personified most perfectly, and then we pray for the grace to respond to life’s circumstances and situations with the grace that he did, with the patience and humility and surrender to divine Providence that St John Henry Newman exemplified: “Lead kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead Thou me on.”
Above all, these days of November, call us to remember our true homeland. For we can become too at home in this life. Yet Christ and his Saints call us to remember, in our pain and struggles now, that this lifetime is a period of exile, as we make our sojourn towards heaven. Therefore, let us look to the things of heaven, treasuring them and eager to acquire heavenly virtues and gifts rather than the earthly things which pass away. Hence Newman said: “And so, too, as regards this world, with all its enjoyments, yet disappointments. Let us not trust it; let us not give our hearts to it; let us not begin with it. Let us begin with faith; let us begin with Christ; let us begin with His Cross and the humiliation to which it leads. Let us first be drawn to Him who is lifted up, that so He may, with Himself, freely give us all things. Let us “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” and then all those things of this world “will be added to us.” They alone are able truly to enjoy this world, who begin with the world unseen. They alone enjoy it, who have first abstained from it. They alone can truly feast, who have first fasted; they alone are able to use the world, who have learned not to abuse it; they alone inherit it, who take it as a shadow of the world to come, and who for that world to come relinquish it.”
Or if I may return to, and end with, Dom Gueranger’s reflection for today’s feast, he says: “Let us learn, from this very hour, to emancipate our souls; let us keep our hearts free, in the midst of the vain solicitudes and false pleasures of a strange land: the exile has no care but his banishment, no joy but that which gives him a foretaste of his fatherland.” This Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and what we gather as a Church to do every Sunday, if not every day, is precisely this foretaste that serves to keep us desiring to become, by God’s grace, saints.
To this end, may St John Henry Newman, Doctor of the Church, and all the Saints in heaven, pray for us!
