“Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see
God.” (Matthew 5:8)
About four years ago, I made a conscience effort at the end
of confessions to encourage the penitents to grow in holiness. When you think of it, that is why we go to
confession. We go because we are not
living out our baptismal call to be holy.
And so today as we celebrate All Saints Day, we are reminded that our
goal as Christians, as human beings, should be nothing more and nothing less
than to quite simply be saints.
Impossible? Who says? Christ reassured us in the gospel a few weeks
ago that nothing is impossible for God.
Our world needs saints and needs them now. We, as God’s holy people, are called to look
upon those who have gone before us as inspiration of how to live a holy life.
I look upon the children here this morning who are dressed
up as saints and I think about the heroic lives they lived which should be
something that our children strive for every single day. These children have dreams, big dreams, of
doing great things. The worse thing you
could tell a child is that something is impossible or out of their reach. So we want to start teaching them now in our
school and CCD program that sainthood is what we all aspire to because we want
to be with God. Today we don’t simply
honor the saints because as St. Bernard once pointed out in a homily, “What do
[the saints] care about earthly honors when their heavenly Father honors them
by fulfilling the faithful promise of their son?...Calling the saints to mind
inspires, or rather arouses in us, above all else, a longing to enjoy their company, so
desirable in itself.” Today we look to
their examples so that we may one day join them in heaven.
So how do we become saints and achieve this impossible
task? Well, Jesus leaves us a roadmap if
you will, a guide to holiness of life in today’s gospel in the Beatitudes. I just want to focus on a few of the
Beatitudes because they are traits that we need to cling to as Christians
striving for sainthood.
Blessed are they who
hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Another translation in the Bible for righteousness is
justice. We all long for justice. In this country, we pledge in the Pledge of
Allegiance “and justice for all.” The
saints are those who worked for justice tirelessly, who took care of the poor,
clothed the naked, fed the hungry, gave shelter to the homeless, and worked to
correcting many of societies injustices.
These are traits that should spur us to action when we come across any
type of injustice.
Blessed are the
merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
The saints showed tremendous mercy. Here in the first row, one of our little
girls is dressed like St. Fautina who taught us about the Divine Mercy of Jesus. We need to be merciful in a world that has
little patience for tolerance for mercy.
We cannot be vengeful or spiteful; we must always be projecting the
mercy and love of God. How can we not
forgive when our Heavenly Father forgives us constantly?
Blessed are the clean
of heart for they will see God.
As I look upon these children, I ponder all the impurities
that you as their parents have to shield them from. Children have that saintly innocence that the
world is constantly trying to rob them of.
There is no parental control big enough to keep this purity that they
now possess, but that should not prevent us from working tirelessly to protect
our children from the evils of this world.
And we as adults, when we allow our hearts to get cluttered by impurities,
we lose sight of God in our lives. Many
of the saints recognized their sinfulness, and worked through those sins,
confessed them, in order to see God better and discern his will in their lives. We must always work to see beyond worldly
evils and focus only on the face of God.
Blessed are they who
are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.
Among the little saints in front of me, I see three martyrs:
St. Lucy, St. Agnes, and St. Cecilia.
Three young girls who loved God so much that nothing on this earth could
tear them away from their Lord and because of this love they suffered martyrdom. Many of these early Christian martyrs
practiced their faith knowing full well that it could cost them their
lives. Jesus warned his disciples in the
gospels that they would be persecuted for following him. Unfortunately, 2000 years later, this persecution
has not stopped. This is where we must
remember our Christian brothers and sisters in Syria and the Middle East who
are persecuted for their faith. They
went to Mass this morning to celebrate All Saints Day just like us, but they
went not knowing what would happen on their way to church or on the way back or
what would happen in the church. They
went in the face of persecution because like those early Christian martyrs,
their love for God is so strong that nothing and no one on this earth could
tear them away from the love of Christ that is bestowed upon us in the
Eucharistic celebration. These brothers
and sisters that suffer religious
persecution are daily modern reminders to us that we need saints in our
world. We need men and women and
children to rise up to demonstrate to the world that holiness is possible. Because if we are not striving every single
day to be saints, then what is the point of calling ourselves Christians?
