All Saints’ Day is a Christian solemnity celebrated on November 1to honour the memory of countless unknown and uncanonised saints of the church who have no feast days. The origin of All Saints’ Day cannot be traced with certainty. The first evidence for the November 1 date of celebration and of the broadening of the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs occurred during the reign of Pope Gregory III (731–741), who dedicated a chapel in St Peter‘s, Rome, on November 1 in honour of all saints.
The Feast of All Saints is a celebration in recognition of the efforts made by many ‘Faithful’ who are not officially canonized or beatified by the church. We celebrate therefore our unsung heroes.These unsung heroes, even though they are enjoying their eternal reward, they are still very much concerned about us. The saints in heaven are entrusted with the important task of intercession. Sure, God already knows all our needs and He could ask us to go directly to Him in our prayers. But the truth is that God wants to use the intercession, and therefore, the mediation of the saints in our lives. He uses them to bring our prayers to Him and in return, to bring His grace to us. They become powerful intercessors for us and participators in God’s divine action in the world.
The feast of All Saints give us a model of holiness and that holiness comes in all sizes and shapes. The saints are rich and poor, young and old, warriors and peacemakers, hermits and organizers of charities, parents and celibates, scholars and those who couldn’t read, every era has its saints as does ours. The struggles may change; the heroes are still among us. It is part of our Catholic teaching that all of us are called to be saints.
Saints are the ones who lived a holy life. So what we celebrate today is Holiness, primarily, it’s God’s holiness that we celebrate. Saints are holy because they have manifested God’s holiness through their lives. They were not super beings with special powers but they were good beings with virtues. They were holy but they too had their human weakness. The saints are in heaven but they are made on earth. They are close to us when we seek their intercession. Saints are not just the Statues to be honoured but they are biographies to be imitated. They are truly the champions of faith.
Many people have a false idea of what a saint is. For them, saints are people who never committed a sin in all their lives. People who were always shinning with virtue – strong willed, humble, pure, who never lost their patience, and who never thought of themselves but always of God and others. But this is a fallacy. It implies that the saints were saints from the cradle onwards. In other words, that saints were born saints. But the saints were not born saints, they became saints. They underwent a conversion – a change of heart which resulted in a change of life. This change did not happen overnight, but it was the result of a long and painful struggle. To become a saint is to become real. It means that the real me, which is often hidden under layers of foolishness, finally emerges.
Sainthood is not a Rank reserved for few but a call for everyone. The saints are our role models. They teach us by their lives that Christ’s holy life of love, mercy and unconditional forgiveness can be lived, with God’s grace, by ordinary people from all walks of life and at all times. The saints are our Heavenly mediators who intercede for us before Jesus, the only mediator between God and us. The saints who put their trust in Christ and lived heroic lives of faith, are the instruments that God uses to work miracles in our present world. Today is a day for us to pray to the saints, both the canonized and the uncanonised, asking them to pray on our behalf that we may live our lives in faithfulness.
The Church reminds us today that God’s call for holiness is universal, that all of us are called to live in His love and to make His love real in the lives of those around us. Holiness is related to the word wholesomeness. We grow in holiness when we live wholesome lives of integrity, truth, justice, charity, mercy and compassion, sharing our blessings with others.
Sainthood is a noble ambition, an ideal, which we can realistically expect to attain. Pope Francis once said: “Holiness of life is not the privilege of a chosen few – it is the obligation, the call, and the will of God for every Christian!” Would you love to be a saint?