Weekly MESSAGE for November 4, 2007: Saints Gone Before Us As Well As Present

November 1, 2009

Focus: Saints Gone Before Us As Well As Present

Dear Friend,

For some time now, scientists have been sending signals into the cosmos, hoping for a response from some intelligent being on some lost planet. The Church has always maintained a dialogue with the inhabitants of another world – the saints. That is what we proclaim when we say, “I believe in the communion of the saints.” Even if inhabitants outside of the solar system existed, communication with them would be impossible, because between the question and the answer, millions of years would pass. Here, though, the answer is immediate because there is a common center of communication and encounter, and that is the risen Christ.

Perhaps in part because of the time of the year in which it falls, the feast of All Saints’ Day has something special that explains its popularity and the many traditions linked to it in some sectors of Christianity. The motive is what John says in the second reading. In this life, “we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.” We are like the embryo in the womb of a mother yearning to be born. The saints have been “born” (the liturgy refers to the day of death as “the day of birth,” “dies natalis.”) To meditate on the saints is to meditate on our destiny. All around us, nature strips itself and the leaves fall, but meanwhile, the Feast of All Saints invites us to gaze beyond the season; it reminds us that we are not destined to wither on this earth forever, like the leaves.

The saints, that is, the saved, are not only those mentioned in the calendar or the Book of the Saints. The “unknown saints” also exist – those who risked their lives for their brothers and sisters, the martyrs of justice and liberty, or of duty, the “lay saints,” as someone has called them. Without knowing it, their robes have also been washed in the blood of the Lamb, if they have lived according to their consciences and if they have been concerned with the good of their neighbor.

Fondly,
Father Nick Amato