Solemnity of All Saints
Knights of Columbus Mid-Year Meeting
National Harbor, Washington, D.C.
November 1st, 2024
Introduction
I cannot celebrate this wonderful Feast of All Saints without recalling the Beatification of Blessed Michael McGivney only a few short years ago. A day later, on the Feast of All Saints, at a Mass of Thanksgiving at St. Mary’s in New Haven, I described him as “a priest of the beatitudes”, and expressed the hope that his canonization would encourage the Knights of Columbus but also many parish priests who serve us so generously. Today, let us redouble our prayers for Father McGivney’s canonization.
Just as Fr. McGivney encourages priests to holiness and charity, so too the amazing array of saints, canonized and uncanonized, encourage all of us to embrace our baptismal call to holiness, to missionary discipleship and to a life of charity – all summed up by Blessed Michael McGivney in a few words: charity, unity and fraternity, coupled with longing for our true homeland in heaven.
Many Or Few?
I cannot read or hear today’s passage from the Book of Revelation without feeling a great longing to join that heavenly multitude. The great 20th century theologian, Henri De Lubac, described how the beauty of new and heavenly Jerusalem daily had a firmer hold on his heart, his mind, his affections – not because he wanted to escape earthly reality or challenges in the Church, but because it was in the Church here on earth that he had experienced something of the beauty and splendor, of the Church in heaven. In taking God’s Word to heart, in having our sins forgiven, in sharing the Eucharist, in living our vocations, in leading a life of charity – are we not already beginning to live a heavenly life? That is why our natural fear of death should more and more give way to a longing, a yearning, to see God face-to-face with all the saints.
As a seminarian I studied today’s reading from the Book of Revelation. During an oral exam, the professor asked me about the number 144,000 – the number of those deemed to be saved. “Was this the literal number of the saved?”, he wanted to know. Came my reply: “I hope not! If that’s all there is, I’d have a better chance of winning the lottery!” Of course, 144,000 is a symbolic number (multiples of the 12 tribes of Israel) and a few lines later the same passage speaks of the great multitude of heaven from every race and nation no one can count. This should console and encourage us on our homeward journey. Getting into heaven is not like trying to get into an exclusive country club!
But then again, let’s not take heaven for granted. Groucho Marx once quipped that he would never join a club that would have him as a member. Heaven, it is true, is not the exclusive preserve of the spiritually snooty, but neither is our admittance into the pearly gates a foregone conclusion. You might say we are travelling between Scylla and Charybdis – two fierce obstacles in the spiritual life, despair on the one hand and presumption on the other. Jesus came to call sinners and throughout his earthly ministry, he readily forgave sin and then imparted the power to forgive sin to his Apostles. Yet Jesus also told us to be perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect. Indeed, if we would truly be adopted God the Father’s beloved children, the Father must see and love in us what he sees and loves in Christ.
This is the great quest of our spiritual journey, a journey we take together in the life and ministry of the Church, the spiritual journey we daily set out on as members of the Order. Our quest is to the perfection of charity. To live as Jesus lived. To love as Jesus loved.
Becoming Perfect
A bar too high, a bridge too far, an unattainable ideal, we might say, as we remember our sins, mistakes, and weaknesses. But earthly remorse is not what the Lord asks of us. Neither is not asking us to save ourselves nor to pull ourselves up to heaven by our bootstraps. No the Lord is asking you and me to do what generations of countless saints, ordinary men and women have done:
to open our hearts to the grace of the Holy Spirit,
to allow the Lord to transform us day-by-day after the pattern of his holiness.
That is why he put the Scriptures in our hands and its words in our ears. That is why he comes to us in sacraments. That is why he numbered us among his faithful in the Church. That is why, providentially, he made us all part of the Knights of Columbus. And isn’t that also why we should want to attract to the Order as many faithful Catholic men and their families as possible?
And the pattern of holiness? It’s the Gospel for today, the Beatitudes. Described by many as Jesus’ self-portrait, the Beatitudes are the traits of a soul on the way to perfection, the heart of the Church’s moral teaching, the heart of her spirituality. For as Pope Benedict XVI taught, ‘to be in Christ is to be in heaven.’ And let us as ourselves: Who was poor in spirit except the Son of God who emptied himself, pouring out his life on the Cross for the forgiveness of our sins? Who mourned our sins more than Christ? Who more than Christ was meek and gentle of heart? Who thirsts for righteousness except the One who said from Cross, “I thirst!” Or who is more merciful than the One whose heart is “an abyss of charity”? Whose heart is purer than he who is God from God and light from light? And who suffered more persecution and insult than the One they crucified between two thieves? Each of us is called in some specific way and in some specific measure to be an image of the Christ of the Beatitudes and for us that means taking up our Cross and following our Savior. Therefore, let us see our trials and tribulations not as useless burdens but as graces spurring us on to holiness, spurring us to be like the Lamb of God who is at the center of that great heavenly multitude we aspire to be a part of. Saints of God, come to our aid, angels of the Lord, pray for us!
Vivat Jesus!