SOLEMNITY OF ALL SAINTS

BE HOLY AS I AM HOLY

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

 

 

All Saints’ Day is a beautiful feast celebrating the call to holiness open to all the daughters and sons of God — those already wrapped in God’s loving embrace and those of us still on the road.

This call to holiness reaches deep into the Scriptures. In Leviticus 19:2, God summons Moses to tell the people: “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” This is a command that rings down through the entirety of the Bible.

For the Bible however, the “holiness” of God referred to the awesome beauty and power of God and God’s astounding tender love and mercy toward God’s people. One of the earliest acclamations about God is found in Exodus 34:6 as Moses encounters God at Sinai: “The Lord, the Lord, a God gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in love and fidelity.”

God’s steadfast mercy, fidelity and abiding love define what holiness means and set a pattern for the way we are to live our lives.  The God of Israel creates humans in the divine “image and likeness” and we have a God-given capacity for holiness.

So, God has called us all to a life of holiness. God has called us to be saints. If we end up being pictured in some stained-glass window in a church that might be great, but what is really important is that we be among the great number in God’s heavenly kingdom. St. John tells us in today’s second reading (1 Jn 3, 1-3) that in God’s love he has made us his children. We are not only called God’s children but that’s what we really are. We ask the Lord today to help us realize our dignity and our purpose to be God’s children for all eternity with God in heaven.

The responsorial Psalm 24 also exults in God’s beauty and power: “The Lord’s are the earth and its fullness; the world and those who dwell in it.” And our response expresses the longing we are to experience as we, too, strive for a life of goodness, a life of holiness: “Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face!”

Finally, in the Gospel we hear Jesus’ beatitudes that begin the Sermon on the Mount, a summation of the values and commitments that lead to authentic holiness, and, Jesus used the future tense, because he wanted to extend our vision beyond our earthly life to the kingdom he had come to inaugurate. We will be comforted, we will be satisfied, we will obtain mercy, and we will see God (Mt 5: 4-8). By faithfully answering God’s invitation to participate in his divine nature on earth, we are sure to receive untold blessings in the life to come. Amen!

Peace and All good!

Fr. Valery Burusu

Parochial Administrator