Celebrating the Saints

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints! If there is one thing to recognize in the lives of the saints, it would be that they came to know their need for God. This is the very heart of the matter for Christians in every age – a recognition of our need for God. This is a world of confusions and anxieties; with so much fear about the future – we often wonder …where is it all going? We certainly have asked this question during the cold war era. Has it all changed now? No. We still wonder if we are closer to WW3. This is a world that has increasingly gone ungodly/unspiritual. A world that seeks no longer its solutions in God the creator. Yet here in the lives of the saints, we have sure signposts for the Church in the present and into the future of how they lived Christian lives in their world with so many tough challenges. They faced unimaginable executions like being put in a barrel full of hot burning oil. This torture is still existent today: In some places in Africa, on account of a rumor, a person could die with a car tire around him and burned. The lives of the Saints speak to us from the past; in this divine Kingdom - encompassing, the whole company of the faithful in heaven and on earth, where life today is to be lived. So, we ask ourselves… what can we learn from the Saints so that we can live a life honoring to God? You might think that the saints had this superhuman faith that allowed them to accomplish amazing things! Nope! You might be surprised to learn of the hardships they went through and still remained faithful to God: the struggles to overcome the yearnings of their flesh; the struggles to sink their own wills to gain the will of God. They relied on God, which enabled them to make the huge sacrifices we read about. They confessed their dependency on God. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus hinted about how our intentions reveal what we truly care about. Obviously, the saints cared deeply about God, but Pharisees cared more about themselves, their future and their image. Who are we trying to please the most? Ourselves or God? Jesus said: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you!” Consequently, the Pharisees ended up with actions that do not match their preaching. Point blank view: If we were to examine ourselves deeply, we would certainly realize that, we are not too far off from the Pharisee’s predicament. We need God desperately like the saints did! When we begin to recognize the brokenness and sinfulness of our frail humanity – we realize how vital is our need for God – We are more likely to see the messes of others instead of our own. We think we have better excuses. Without God’s grace and mercy, that we see in Jesus Christ who lived among us; the one who has accepted us just as we are, and still work on us each day to re-discover the clean image of God in us, because the Holy Spirit is already at work in and through each one of us in this sacramental celebration of Holy Eucharist that we have every Sunday. This is God’s initiative for us: to bring about our healing/ transformation, especially Jesus taking our frailty and sinfulness - into His divine glory to cleanse us and to make it possible for us to become God’s adopted children. Today we celebrate God’s ability to use flawed people to do divine things. We celebrate all on whom God has acted in baptism, sealing them, as Ephesians says, with the mark of the promised Holy Spirit. Through baptism, we are adopted into God’s family. An initiation into a new way of life of God's Kingdom. We celebrate the fact that God creates faith in God’s people, and through ordinary acts of love, they bring the Kingdom of Heaven closer to Earth. We celebrate that we have, in all who’ve gone before us, what the apostle Paul calls: “such a great cloud of witnesses” and that the faithful departed are as much the body of Christ as we are. So, today let us remember all the deeply faithful and flawed saints of God’s church through whom the glory of God continues to be revealed. Let us remember Peter the fisherman and the other disciples. Let us remember the martyrs of our faith, the early bishops: Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, Polycarp... and many more beloved departed, friends who loved God way more than their own lives. Those who taught us and helped us on the path to reconnect with God. We thank you Lord for the many, you brought into your eternal church body, some of whom still light our own paths. Thank you! Amen.