All Saints...

Easier to pray... than examine your conscience.



It's Sunday!



November 1 - All Saints


What do the " Saints" - people we have known and loved and knew they would make a success of their lives, but also others who gave us quite the opposite impression - DO in heaven? One answer is that we don't really know, but this is not entirely correct. Mostly they REJOICE in the Lord but they are also, we believe, concerned about us and want us with them forever.


The First Reading is taken from the Book of Revelation which was written to encourage the early Christians of the second half of the first Christian century. From that point of view it is still, unfortunately, quite relevant. Even in our day the Church is being persecuted here and there in different parts of the world and - in another real sense - ALL of us are being subtly "persecuted" and weakened in our faith by the atmosphere around us poisoned by negative media.


The Responsorial Psalm brings us back to earth again. Our relatives and friends and neighbors are among that "great multitude" but we still have to arrive at journey's end and so we cry out in longing - everybody does, even those who say they don't believe in God. Then, how explain we are never satisfied?


The Second Reading points out that we shall be like God for all eternity. Too little! The God we believe in is limitless in His love, in His desire to give and thus in heaven we will BE in God just as, indeed, we are now if we could only grasp the reality of the Master's presence in our lives. This explains the urgency of correcting our defects, i.e. making ourselves as united as possible to him, because the unity we possess as we die is the unity that we will have in Paradise forever.


Finally, in the Gospel, Jesus gives us the blue-print for success in life - real and permanent success, not just whatever we may accomplish during our time on earth. Note that the Master speaks of states or attitudes, not of prayer. This is an important point. Since it is easier to say prayers than to examine our consciences, many good people say endless prayers all day long but the meantime they are much less concerned about rash judgments, gossip, fits of anger, lack of charity, and many other impediments to union with Christ. And so the lesson we can draw from today's liturgy is: of course that we must pray and ask the Lord's help - "without me you can do nothing." But we must also try very hard to find what defects may be keeping us from full union with him and ask his help constantly to get rid of them.


~ November 2011 Concord