Feast of All Saints - Commemoration of the Faithful Departed – XXXI Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B – November 3, 2024
Roman Rite
Rev 7,2-4.9-14; Ps 23; 1 John 3,1-3; Mt 5,1-12a
Ambrosian Rite
Is 56,3-7; Ps 23; Eph 2,11-22; Lk 14,1a.15-24
The Sunday after the Dedication of the Milan Cathedral.
1) Citizens and family of heaven.
The liturgy, which on November 1st[1] celebrates the Solemnity of All Saints and on November 2nd remembers all the dead, makes us venerate the memory[2] of the saints not only by having them as exemplary models or rescuers, but also to make us live in their company through a familiarity that becomes prayer and consolidates the union of the whole Church in the Holy Spirit through the exercise of fraternal charity. To help understand and live more and more the prayer of praise to God for the Saints, charity for the dead and a life that has love as the law of freedom, I’d like propose some reflections on the communion of the saints and the eternal life.
a- To believe and live the communion of saints[3], means to believe and live the mysterious but real life that we share with the saints. The life of Christ in us is the same life that it is in them.
As the communion among us, who are on a journey on this earth, brings us closer to Christ, so the communion with the saints unites us to Christ from whom, as from the source and from the head, comes the grace and life of the people of God. Nothing is more beautiful than this sharing acted in us and in the saints by the Holy Spirit. Thanks to this love of sharing, we can live in the Communion of Saints that begins at home, in the workplace, in the office, in the fields, and wherever a human person with his work carries out the design of divine charity. It is love that pierces our works of provisional life and transforms them into works of eternal life. The Communion of Saints is a communion of love, which unites in prayer all the faithful of Christ: those who are pilgrims on this earth, those who, having died, purify themselves, and those who are happy in heaven. All together we form one Church: an immense community of sisters and brothers who in the Brother pray the Our Father (cf. Clement Rebora). In extreme synthesis, love is not only a law; it is a gift to be shared, as this XXXI Sunday in Ordinary Time reminds us.
b- For us Christians to believe and live eternal life is not only to believe in a life that lasts forever, but also in a new quality of existence, fully immerse in the love of God, that frees us from evil and death and puts us in endless communion with all the brothers and sisters who share the same Love. Eternity, therefore, can already be present at the center of earthly and temporal life, when the soul, through grace, is united to God, its ultimate foundation. "All things are passing away, God never changes" (Saint Teresa of Avila). A Psalm says: "My flesh and heart are broken; but the rock of my heart is God, God is my destiny forever" (Ps 72/73, 26). All Christians called to holiness are men and women.
2) Longing of Heaven and happy Communion.
While I hope that these two liturgical feasts will awaken in us a longing for Heaven, I would like to invite us to cultivate not only the desire of the company of the Saints, but also prayer so that Christ, our life, may be shown to us as he has shown himself to the Saints and make us ever more deeply rooted in Him. In this happy communion of saints, it is very useful the prayer that recommends to the mercy of God the dead who in Him are alive, have preceded us and wait for us. It is a guarantee of consolation, as St. Augustine reminds us: "A tear for the dead evaporates, a flower on the grave withers, a prayer, instead, reaches the heart of the Most High" who redeems with the gift of his Son on the Cross. For this reason, we have the certainty that "no one will be lost". Christ’s love for us has pierced His hands and has eternally "nailed" us to Christ. Those wounds are now glorious and fill of hope every fragment of our life which, in Him, is anchored for eternity. In this regard Pope Francis recalled that "the first Christians represented hope with an anchor, as if life was the anchor on the shore, and all of us, on the move, pull the rope tied to the anchor ... This hope is a beautiful image: having our heart anchored where our loved ones, relatives and friends are, where our ancestors are, where the saints are, where Jesus is. Where God is. This is hope: this is hope that does not disappoint. It is a sure hope that comes from faith which assures us that nothing is lost in Heaven, where there will be the reunion with our father, our mother, our brothers and sisters and all our friends.
Indeed, love stronger than death is the guarantee that there will be the desired reunion. The passionate heart of Christ is our "stable and definitive dwelling place", where we will be united forever in Love, for Love and from Love. For this reason, on November 2nd we "commemorate" our brothers and sisters. Let us remember "with them" the same love that has reached us and united us in the great family of God. The liturgy is not so much a memory of death, but of resurrection. The liturgy speaks of tears wiped away by the hand of God. The liturgical prayer for the dead makes us ask, "Let them enjoy the light of your face". Here is a verb humble and strong, unarmed and human: enjoy. Eternity blooms in the joy of a love enjoyed forever because nothing can separate us from it, as the Apostle Paul teaches: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Neither angels nor demons, neither life nor death, nothing can ever separate us from love" (Rom 8,35-37). Let us pray then with the whole Church, which in the Mass makes us ask: "Hear, God, the prayer that the community of believers raises to you in the faith of the risen Lord and confirm in us the blessed hope that together with our deceased brothers and sisters we will rise again in Christ to new life. Amen".
This is what I propose to invite you to live the feast of the saints, the commemoration of the dead and the XXXI Sunday in Ordinary Time, in which we are reminded that the love for God and the neighbor[4] is not only a commandment but a gift to be lived according to the authentic Christian spirit, that is, in the light that comes from the Paschal Mystery that illuminates the law of love as a law of freedom. Christ died, rose again, and opened for us the way to the house of the Father, the Kingdom of life and peace. Whoever follows Jesus in this life is welcomed there, where he has preceded us and awaits us.
The Gospel of this XXXI Sunday (Mk 12,28-34) proposes again the teaching of Jesus on the greatest commandment: the commandment of love, which is twofold: love God and love your neighbor. The saints, whom we have just celebrated in a single solemn feast, are precisely those who, trusting in the grace of God, seek to live according to this fundamental law. In fact, the commandment of love can be fully put into practice by those who live in a deep relationship with God, just as the children become capable of loving from a good relationship with their mother and father. At the beginning of his Treatise on the love of God, Saint John of Avila writes: "The reason that most drives our heart to the love of God is to consider deeply the love that He had for us... This, more than the benefits, drives the heart to love because the one who gives another a benefit, gives something that he possesses, but the one who loves the other, gives himself and all that he has, without leaving anything else to give. “(n. 1). Again, love is not reducible to a command, it is a gift, a reality that God makes us know and experience, so that, like a seed, it can sprout also within us and develop in our life.
3) Way of holiness.
I’d like to conclude these reflections with some thoughts on holiness, because this is the unifying theme of the three days that we are called to live as members of the Communion of Saints.
Holiness is for all, as the Bible teaches already in the Old Testament: "Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy" (Lev 19,2). And in the New Testament Saint Paul writes: "This is the will of God that you be holy" (1 Thes. 4:3) following in Christ who said in the Sermon on the Mount: "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48). What is this perfection, this holiness of God? It consists in the fullness of Love which is God. Holy is he who believes in love and has confidence in Jesus, who has revealed the mercy of God. Mercy freely offered, continually offered and offered to all.
Holiness is not something that only some people with special gifts are interested in: "Holiness is not something extraordinary, it is not for a few chosen. Holiness is a simple duty for each one of us" (St M. Teresa of Calcutta). The saints are the saved ones; they are those who have responded with love to the Love up to give their lives to the Lord.
Besides martyrdom, the highest way of giving life to the Lord is virginity. The women, who consecrate their virginity for the Kingdom of God while remaining in the world, show that the gift of themselves and of all their existence is possible every day, in the humility of a daily life constantly oriented to God loved above all things, in joys and sufferings.
The qualities that adorn this life are: consecrated and spiritually fruitful virginity, passionate charity, reserved modesty, discreet sweetness, and Marian humility: in short: the wisdom of the heart. For this reason, on the day of their consecration, the Church asks these women to "always contemplate the divine Master and to conform their lives to his example. Let perfect chastity, generous obedience, and poverty lived with evangelical joy shine in them. Father, may you like them for their humility. May they serve you docilely, adhere to you with all their heart. Let them be patient in trials, steadfast in faith, happy in hope, and diligent in love. May their lives consecrated to you edify the Church, promote the salvation of the world and appear as a luminous sign of future goods" (RCV n. 8).
[1] As early as the 4th century, the Church celebrated the memory of all Christians who were martyrs of the faith on May 13th. In 615 Pope Boniface IV made this celebration official by instituting the "Feast of All Martyrs" to commemorate the dedication of the Pantheon, an ancient Roman temple transformed into a Christian church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs. This temple dedicated to all the gods (Pantheon) was thus converted to celebrate the memory of the martyrs, that is, of those who "come from the great tribulation and have washed their robes, making them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev 7,14). Subsequently, the celebration of all martyrs was extended to all saints. In fact, during the 8th century, at the initiative of the Frankish Bishops, the feast of All Martyrs took the name of All Saints' Day and was moved to November 1st.
[2] Much more than a simple remembrance, memory is an intimacy that transcends time and space, the "memorial" which in Scripture comes to become "the present of the past" (St. Augustine).
[3] The Catechism of the Catholic Church states at No 960 that "the expression communion of saints indicates first of all the "holy things" ["sancta"], and above all the Eucharist with which the unity of the faithful, who constitute one body in Christ, is represented and produced. And at No 961 he recalls that communion of saints also refers to the communion of "holy persons" ["sancti"] in Christ who is "dead for all", so that what each one does or suffers in and for Christ bears fruit for all those who live firmly anchored to this "Rock". They have feet on the earth, but their hearts already in Heaven, definitive dwelling of the friends of God.
[4] This is also the teaching of Pope Francis in his recent encyclical DILEXIT NOS (published on October 24th, 2024) in which he teaches that the Most Holy Heart of Jesus shows the immense love of Jesus towards us, his brothers and sisters. At the same time, it reminds us of our primary duty to love God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves, as a law of freedom.
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