Homily from the Parish Priest for the Feast of All Saints

Mass Readings: Revelation 7:2-4,9-14; I John:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

Think of someone you really admire.  Could be someone you know well or someone contemporary or historic you know a good deal about.  Someone you aspire to learn from, model your life on.  I can think of several and they’re really important to me.  And I know learning about the lives of others is important to my life as over the years I’ve found reading a biography or two has been a very helpful natural element of my annual retreat. Spending time listening to the way others have navigated their way through life is central to living the life of the Christian. 

 And not just hearing that from the individual themselves – autobiography – but listening to how they were perceived by others around them – and now I find their life is being evaluated and appreciated by me as I learn from them.  Seeing yourself through the eyes of the beholder is a fundamental, if not the fundamental, element of being human.  In an increasingly self-referential age when we do lots of self-evaluation, give ourselves permission to think and act how we think is right and acceptable, we need to hear how others perceive us, how we contribute or not to the common good, and how we need to change.  

 And this for me is one of the key gifts of our faith in what we call the saints.  Allowing others to be held up to the mirror, showing us a path we can follow. And for the Christian we think of the good moral life in particular ways exemplified in the lives of the saints.  It’s not about achievement, it’s not about success in life. But there are particular character traits which we associate with a good life: generosity, kindness, good judgment, integrity, authenticity.  We know when we encounter it. Yet for the saint there is something also above our experience we just can’t define. To be holy is a gift from God, to be holy rests in the mystery we are called to embrace of God’s presence in each human being made in his image, and so to recognize someone’s holiness is actually to draw us closer to God.   To draw us closer to God.  And that is why we hold up particular individuals who are called saints, who are examples of holiness, and so lead us to God. And to what God is all about.

So then what is God all about?  What do all the saints really stand for?    Well, the Gospel the Church offers us on this solemn feast day gives us an answer: it’s a well-known Gospel scene – the first part of the Sermon on the Plain – and the core of it: what are called ‘the Beatitudes’.  Because they are a series of statements starting with the word ‘blessed’ representing who it is who will inhabit the Kingdom of God and are to be called blessed and indeed saintly.  The translation here is ‘happy’ but it’s actually something deeper being expressed, something representing the call of God, of the witness to the things of God, to his Kingdom.   

 And so we are given an account here of the hallmark of the Kingdom in opposition indeed to some of the ways of the world.  And these become the blueprint for living out the Christian vocation in the world.  And it’s these which drive the saint and so drives all of us as human beings to realize what holiness is really about.  To see in vulnerability and fragility the essence of the human soul rather than power, success, self-sufficiency.  To see in the poor and the weak the presence of Christ in opposition to a counter-ethic of success, of wealth, of abuse of power, which must be overcome.  To see in the human race’s capacity to make peace an obligation to do all we can to end wars, conflicts, and to condemn violence in making way for building bridges, dialogue, reconciliation. This weekend, as world leaders gather in Glasgow to discuss and hopefully commit to action on climate change, we are reminded of the call of the Christian to care for the world around us, to recognize everything is interconnected on our planet and how we are called to nurture that.  The newsletter article is all about this so I’m not going to speak about it here.

 I think increasingly that being a Christian really tough.  If you’re anything like me you will recognize that following our common vocation, the call to be holy as are the saints, is as tough as it ever has been.  I know I’m not alone when I discern a culture of aggression in society at the moment.  Of the presence also of spiritual warfare, of destructive influences which go completely off piste and throw confusion and anxiety into the midst of life.  For me this emerges from a certain obsession with placing myself at the centre of the universe, allowing my worldly achievements, wealth, successes in life to become so one-dimensional they cloud reality.  Pope Francis is calling us to loom always outside of ourselves, to discern the real needs, the real needs not my own self-referential version of them, to place myself always linked in to not the wealthy and powerful who serve me but to the poorest, to those on the peripheries, and in the midst of an interconnected natural world given us by God as his stewards.  My heroes recognize this and I hope yours do too.  And I admire most those who have struggled with this in life, who have responded generously to the battle between good and the powers of destruction inside and outside the Church, and whom I am awe of in my safe cosy compliance with it all. 

 All Saints, then, represents a fresh invitation to us to do some interior cleanout.  Where are the tensions between the values of the world and those of the Kingdom?  Where in my life do I see these Gospel values in stark confrontation with those of the world?  Am I generous in what I give to those who are without or am I just in it for myself and my own satisfaction?  Do I even recognise the growing catastrophe this winter of people losing jobs, livelihoods, homes in the midst of this economic downturn?  Do I see the loneliness around me?  Maybe I do because I’m experiencing it or am afraid of it myself.  Am I satisfied with what I do for others – in my family, how I treat my friends, how I influence others, maybe in whom I associate with when I have to make tough choices of whom to do business with? Do I compromise my Christian faith or do I, like the saints, put myself on the line for Christ, for the Kingdom, for what his Kingdom is all about? 

The call of this Sermon on the Plain is first of all to recognise that I do.  Yes, I do, perhaps in small ways, all the time.  I know I do.  I’m guilty of it.  And so I am called to constantly look for opportunities to change.  And to do this I am called to the faith of the saints: to know and to trust God, to know that when all else fails, only him and his Kingdom can give us a deep and lasting inner happiness. Can lead us to blessedness – a sense of fulfilment at living out our calling, our universal vocation to be holy, to bring Christ and His values to the world. 

How do I respond to the Lord in my own call to saintliness?  How do I bring the values of the Kingdom to my everyday life in this world at this time of great challenges and yet such great opportunities? 

Fr Dominic Robinson SJ