Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Solemnity of All Saints

Ave Maria! Today is the splendid solemnity of All Saints. Hallelujah! What a gloriously triumphant feast! As Pope Benedict XVI pointed out in his General Audience of April 13, 2011, "the whole of the Church’s history is marked by these men and women who with their faith, with their charity, and with their life have been beacons for so many generations, as they are for us too. The saints expressed in various ways the powerful and transforming presence of the Risen One. They let Jesus so totally overwhelm their life that they could say with St Paul 'it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me' (Gal 2:20)."

In today's second reading from 1 John 3:1-3, the apostle urges us to "See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God" and then declares:  "Yet so we are."  Because the saints so deeply and so intimately knew the Father's love, they were able to let His Beloved Son Jesus "totally overwhelm their life."   When we, like the saints, truly realize that "we are God's children now," then we will be able to say with St. Augustine:  "my life shall be a real life, being wholly filled by you."  Emptied by God Himself of all that is not His, of everything that is not Him, we will be filled with the holiness of Him of whom and to whom we sing:  "For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father.  Amen!" 

Hallelujah indeed!

Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power, and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.  ~Revelation 7:12

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