By Leon Bent-
All Saints’ Feast is a solemn, holy day of the Catholic Church, celebrated annually on November 1. It is dedicated to the saints of the Church, that is, all those who have attained heaven. It is an opportunity for believers to remember all the saints and martyrs, known and unknown, throughout Christian history: “Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…” (Hebrews 12:1).
It is a perfect time to remember that God has made you special, for him and his purposes, and that, he has joined you into the eternal, worldwide fellowship of all his saints. Moreover, it’s a good day to take seriously the fact that God wants to make himself known in this world through you as a member of the family of all saints.
Let us not just remember the saints once each year, but may we celebrate our mystical communion with them through Jesus Christ our Lord everyday – and in a special way every time we gather at the Lord’s Table, through Holy Communion.
The number of Saints present is beyond counting, as was beheld by the Apostle John in the book of Revelation: “After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God” (Revelation 7:9-11).
“All it takes to make a man a saint is Grace. Anyone who doubts this knows neither what makes a saint nor a man”, Pascal observes in Pensées. Grace is the fire of divine love. “Always a psalm on the lips; always Christ in the heart!” (John Cassian). Mystics also define grace as “sublime wisdom” (St. John of the Cross). Teilhard de Chardin sees mystically, “the whole world as an altar, and calls out to God.” This energy, this power overwhelms us : when a blind stirring of love rises in the heart, from ‘who-knows-not-where’ (The Cloud of Unknowing).
In the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte which the Pope presented to the Church at the end of Jubilee Year 2000, he states, “Holiness is a message that convinces without the need for words, is the living reflection of the face of Christ” (n. 7). To understand the Church, we need to be acquainted with the saints who are her most eloquent sign, her sweetest fruit. To contemplate the face of Christ in the changing, diversified situations of the modern world, we must look at the saints who are “the living reflection of the face of Christ”, as the Pope reminds us. The Church must proclaim the saints and she must do so, in the name of that proclamation of holiness that fills her and makes her, precisely, a means of sanctification in the world.
It is the Message for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, in 2002: “The main task of the Church is to lead Christians along the path of holiness…. The Church is the “home of holiness’, and the charity of Christ, poured out by the Holy Spirit, is her soul” (Message for the 39th World Day of Prayer for Vocations, 21 April 2002, nn. 1, 2; ORE, 5 December 2001, p. 3).
In the Church, therefore, everything and particularly every vocation, is at the service of holiness! It is undoubtedly in this sense that, when we look at the Church we must never forget to see in her the face of the “mother of saints”, who brings forth a fruitful and magnanimous superabundance of holiness. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger says, “The Communion of Saints “express the divine in the human, the eternal in time” (Congregation for The Cause of Saints, Reflection, by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins).
What do the Saints enjoy? Heaven! Those who die in God’s grace and friendship and are perfectly sanctified, [whether in this life, or in the next life in Purgatory], live forever with Christ. They are like God forever, for they “see him as he is,” face to face (CCC 1023). Heaven is principally a state of utter and absolute fulfilment. In the possession of God in the beatific vision the blessed will experience what cannot be put into words; a radical union with God that transcends anything we could envisage. And it is precisely because of that radical union with God in Christ, the blessed will also experience a union with the other members of the Body of Christ that transcends our ability to imagine as well.
We live in a time before the return of Christ; living by faith in what we cannot fully see (2 Cor. 5:7). A time will come, though, when that faith will give way to sight, when we will see our Lord as he is. In that moment we will be transformed, like Christ’s glorious body (1 John 3:2). Then, we will enter into the rest that God prepared before the foundations of the world for those who love him (Heb. 4:12, 8-10; Matt. 25:34).
St. Paul seems to warn us not even to try to conjecture what heaven will be like: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).
But, at any rate, we do catch a glimpse of the glory that awaits us in the Transfiguration where Jesus’ face “shone brilliantly like the sun” (Matt. 17:2). This text not only reveals Christ’s divinity, but the glory of humanity transformed by divinity! It reveals, in that sense, what awaits our humanity. “The just shall shine like the sun” (Mt. 13:43; Dan. 12:3). According to Ps. 4:7, “The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, will be signed upon us.”
Leon Bent is an ex-Seminarian and studied the Liberal Arts and Humanities, and Philosophy, from St. Pius X College, Mumbai. He holds Masters Degree in English Literature and Aesthetics. He has published three Books and have 20 on the anvil. He has two extensively “Researched” Volumes to his name: Hail Full of Grace and Matrimony: The Thousand Faces of Love. He won The Examiner, Silver Pen Award, 2000 for writing on Social Issues, the clincher being a Researched Article on Gypsies in India, published in an issue of the (worldwide circulation) Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection, New Delhi. On April, 28, 2018, Leon received the Cardinal Ivan Dias Award for a research paper in Mariology.