All Saints 1.11.15 The call to be saints
Today’s feast is a chance for us to celebrate the ‘unsung saints’ those who have reached Heaven, but are not canonised saints.
Today is a time to acknowledge the good that has been achieved by members of the Church over the years. Faithful attention to duty, courage under duress, temptations and sins resisted, good works of every kind. The living out of the Beatitudes.
These saints have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. They have obtained mercy for their sins and been found faithful at the time of death.
It is encouraging that ordinary people we have known - aunties and uncles, teachers we had at school; people who were old when we were young – that people like these who were ordinary in their lives, and probably only ordinary in virtue, could now be in Heaven. It gives us hope of achieving the same thing.
We would like to be better than ‘ordinary’; but it is comforting all the same that there is a ‘safety net’ in place. Thank God for Confession!
However we are called to holiness. We must not see the commandments as a burden, something to be resented. Nor must we water them down as so many are trying to do.
The commands of God are a liberation. What God tells us to do must be the best thing for us, and it must be possible to fulfil. God could not command the impossible, and would not set us anything but the best course. We could never think of anything better ourselves.
So we do not fear holiness. It is just a matter of seeing it in the right light.
If we are told: you must be good all the time; and never do anything wrong – that can sound like a burden; each command gradually tightening the grip on us till we give up all our pleasures, and see ourselves being reduced to singing in the choir at church!
But the same thing can be put in other words: Would you like to discover the life as planned by God directly for you? To discover the potential happiness that can be uncovered as you grow in acceptance of God's will for you?
Self-improvement courses are very popular at present. You can learn how to speed-read, improve your memory, master public speaking, and become proficient at Windows 10… and all such things. They will enhance your life.
But not so much as you will be enhanced if you simply discover the ways of God and how immediately and directly He will work with you in your life; how joyful it will be for you to be in communion with Him; taking instructions from Him; gradually overcoming faults and discovering the corresponding virtues.
To be an All-Saint is to be in tune with the will of God. There are different levels of sainthood. It depends on how many talents we were given in the first place. Also it depends on how soon we enter the service of the Lord.
The longer we spend in the Lord’s service the better; the sooner we start in the vineyard the better.
But then intensity is a factor. One could come in later but be far more zealous in the service of the Lord than someone who has been around longer.
You are here now and that is a good thing. Wherever you have been, whatever you have done, now you are expressing your willingness to put your lives in His hands.
Do not be afraid of what He has in store for you. Be assured He will forgive you for anything and everything up to this point, and He will guide and sustain you in whatever comes next.
Is it all worth it? Ask any saint! May the Lord make us saints, and bring us through every obstacle to the greatest heights we can reach.
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