Solemnity of All Saints:

All Saints Day - 1 November 2023

Today we celebrate a very bright and full of consolation solemnity: the feast of all saints. We do not remember today individual saints for whom we may have a particular devotion. Today we remember the saints all together: we celebrate the communion of saints.

In reality, this being in communion and walking together is part of the vocation to holiness. We can never imagine a saint alone, isolated, and individualistic. Holiness creates communion and renews relationships. The saints renew the life of the Church and the communities of the faithful.

In this way today, by celebrating the feast of all the saints together, we also celebrate the beauty of Christian life which is always a community life, a communion of faithful who walk together towards the full manifestation of the Kingdom of God: the kingdom of peace and justice.

As you know, I just returned from Rome where the first part of the synod of bishops on synodality took place: we worked for 4 weeks to analyze the suggestions that had arrived from all parts of the world so that our Church is more participatory and supportive. I must tell you that those have been very intense days. A fundamental theme that emerged was precisely that of the holiness to which we are all called thanks to baptism. For this reason, if we truly want to be a synodal Church, we must first of all become more aware of our baptism and our baptismal vocation which is a vocation to holiness. We are called to become saints and to become saints together. Saints in communion walking together in the light of the gospel.

The Word of God helps us understand this fundamental dimension of our faith. The first reading taken from the book of Apocalypse announces the vision of an immense people gathered around the Lamb of God, the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world. An immense multitude. We can say that everyone is called to holiness.
But what is holiness? The Gospel presents us with Jesus' discourse on the Beatitudes. Therefore, holiness is a call to joy, not to a fleeting and transitory joy, but to a true and lasting joy.

Let's ask ourselves: when are we truly happy? Is it when we are successful and manage to develop our career? Is it when we have a lot of money and we place our security in earning, or in the dominion and power we can exercise over others? These are illusions. These things do not lead us to happiness but to death and painful illusion.
The Gospel instead tells us that the poor are blessed because they possess the Kingdom of God. Happy are the meek, those who thirst and hunger for justice, blessed are the pure in heart, the merciful, the peacemakers, happy are those persecuted for of justice. Why are all these blessed and happy? Because God responds to our desire for justice and peace, God responds to the desire for happiness. In Jesus Christ, dead and risen, God responds to our desire. In baptism we are made participants in the life of Christ who defeated evil and death. 

Dear ones, here is the secret of a happy life: being loved and loving, seeking the kingdom of God every day, serving God in our brothers and sisters: whoever loves is in communion with God and with all our brothers and sisters.

Finally, Saint John in his letter gives us the ultimate name for our vocation to love, vocation to holiness and communion: the vocation to be children of God. We are truly children of God already now. And being children means being wanted, being loved. However, what we will be, has not yet been revealed. That is, we are still on the journey: here the theme of the synod returns once again, of the synodal Church, the people of the children of God who walk together until the full encounter with Jesus. And when we see him face to face, we will become like him, and we will be sons and daughters in him forever. Therefore, our life is truly a path towards full joy, which no one can ever take away from us.

The feast of all saints therefore reminds us of our baptismal vocation, to be saints, to love and be loved, to be in communion with one another, to be a Church on the move in the service of the kingdom of God.

May our Lady of Arabia and all the saints protect us while we are on the way. 

Let us walk together towards the fulness of joy.