Weekly HOMILY for November 1, 2009: Saints Beyond the Margins

Feast of All Saints, Cycle B
Our Lady of Grace
November 1, 2009

Saints Beyond the Margins
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


Ben Franklin’s Sayings

We all learned about Benjamin Franklin when we are in school. Everybody here today could say something about him, he was so famous.

Franklin was a political theorist, a diplomat, a civic activist, an inventor, and more. And maybe we know him above all for his many famous sayings.

(Have them guess the second half of each) For example: “A stitch in time saves nine.” “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

“A place for everything; everything in its place.” “God helps those who help themselves.”

And here is a good one: “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” “Honesty is the best policy.”

“Haste makes waste.” “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.”

An important point I want to make is that Ben Franklin’s sayings tell us something about him as a person. They tell us that Franklin was clever, practical, frugal, witty, and understood marriage.


Jesus’ Sayings

Now, in today’s Gospel, we hear some of the important sayings of Jesus and in a similar way they tell us something about him.

If we look through these sayings, we see that they are about people who often fall through the cracks. They are about the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the sorrowing, the lonely, the peacemakers, the simple, and the persecuted.

We see people who are not on the Fortune 500 list or on the cover of Time magazine. We see people who do not quite make it and are out of the mainstream.

And, in effect, Jesus says: “I am concerned about these people. They have my compassion, my thoughts, and indeed my blessing.”

In fact, Jesus says that they are and will in the future be “blessed.” So these sayings reveal something of the mind and heart and person of Jesus.


Jesus’ Scope of Concern

The reason for Jesus’ concern for these people is clear in our first reading.

Saint John gives this great vision of heaven. He sees countless holy ones there – 144,000.

This number is of course symbolic. The biblical number of perfection and fulfillment is twelve.

So John is saying: “Wow! Twelve thousand times twelve thousand – perfection times perfection! You can’t even count the number of people who are among the holy ones.”

Like Jesus’ sayings, this also reveals something about God. God’s love and concern, Jesus’ love and concern are inclusive, unlimited, and universal.

So today’s Feast of All Saints celebrates the love of God that is way beyond our understanding and imagination. As the reading says, God’s love has found a way to redeem “people from every race, language, and way of life.”

This means that God’s love includes those in and those not in the mainstream. It includes those who have not heard or accepted his love in Jesus.

God’s love includes Jews and Muslims and Hindus and everyone. It is simply beyond anything or anyone we know.


All Saints

So, today, on this Feast of All Saints, we celebrate all saints.

We celebrate those formally recognized by the Church, like the newly canonized Saint Damien of Molokai.

And we celebrate those unsung saints – good, Christ-like people like our grandparents or parents or teachers or volunteers here at our parish.

And in celebrating these saints, we really celebrate God’s love that we see so clearly in Jesus and in the sayings that we hear today. God’s love will find what we would never find and redeem what we would think is irredeemable.

This is a feast of God’s love and because of that, it is feast of hope. For it is because of God’s love that there is always hope – for you and me, for those on the margins and those insensitive to those on the margins, for our Church and other religions, for our country and our world.

We celebrate God’s love for all and the hope that this gives us. That is what All Saints Day is really about.