All Saints 2007

I have often thought of All Saints Day as the Church’s way of inciting her membership to keep up the good fight of the faith. We all need incentives and encouragement from time to time. Like a coach giving a pep talk to a team, the Church on All Saints Day seems to be saying to us, ‘go out there and give it your all. Play so as to win. And keep the goal in sight at all times.’ Anticipating the joy of victory is sweet and we who, in this valley of tears, have to slug it out against what Saint Paul called the spirituality of iniquity, need the motivation.

But I have another angle from which to look at this day. It’s inspired by an odd phrase that comes from the Letter to the Hebrews that speaks of “a cloud of witnesses” round about us. The image that comes to my mind in that ‘cloud of witnesses’ is what I have so often seen depicted in religious art where, in a given scene, say, of some martyr about to be slain, there is opened up above the figures a cross section of heaven where the saints in glory, towering over the scene, are watching and cheering the mortal on. This cloud of witnesses then is first of all, like a cloud, something hanging from above. This creates yet another mental picture, fans in the upper deck of a stadium or an audience at the theater in their box seats. Their lofty position gives them a privileged view of the whole scene. The saints in heaven are ‘above’ us in many different senses, but also in this: that they can view us (according to the extent of God’s permission) from a perspective that has an advantage we often lack in our near-sightedness. Getting the long view, they see how we are striving and where we may be failing to accomplish our goal. Today we are being asked by the Church to look at ourselves, then, as if from the high vantage point of the saints and to analyze our strategies, make improvements in our sometimes poor performance, and, most of all, keep going until we win.

These saints, moreover, are said not only to form a sort of cloud, but particularly a cloud of witnesses. Witnesses can mean either those who are viewing something (as I have been describing them) or, in a deeper sense, meaning those who are themselves the witnesses. Here in our Christian vocabulary we have a use of the word ‘witness’ as someone who is either a martyr shedding his blood in proof (or witness) of his faith, or else someone who boldly ‘witnesses’ to his faith in standing fast against opposing forces, against those who try to impeded Christ’s dominion of men’s souls. In this sense then, a ‘cloud of witnesses’ indicates that we are expected to do something similar: to witness. For some that means sharing the faith with others, but for others it may mean real persecution, even unto death and physical torture (it’s actually going on today in some places where Christians are being imprisoned and killed). For still others it may mean a loss of a job, alienation from family, being ousted from some social clique, etc. There are not only gains in religion but losses as well. Our Lord indicated that this might happen even in one’s own house, where one may have to renounce father or mother, wife or children for the sake of the faith. For most of us this extremity does not apply. But the important thing is that if this were required, we would have to be willing to sacrifice all (like Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac) for the sake of God, Who is our Origin and our final End.

So, my All Saints Day message this year is this: remember that you have been created by God for one ultimate goal, namely, for His greater glory. You were not made for yourself, not even for your neighbor’s good (however an admirable thing that is). You were made in order to praise God in heaven with the saints. If you forget that you will be so distracted by all the proximate goals you have in life, all the things you have to do before you, that you will miss the larger picture and not live life rightly or well. Getting the grand view on All Saints Day should make us want to evaluate where we are in our place on the field of life and consider our performance. Are we doing the will of God or not? Are we heading towards victory or loss? We have indeed a cheering section in that cloud of witnesses rooting for us: these are the saints. The record we have of their successes is the book of the Lives of the Saints. But it is meant for us to add on to the chapters of this on-going book. Our own life’s story has already begun to unfold. Maybe we’re halfway through it, maybe we’re almost near the end of our story. How does it read so far? And how will it all turn out?

All Saints Day is meant for us to take a look at how we’re doing. If the game needs a new strategy, a new play, if the book’s story is not going well, there’s still a turning point that can be made; there’s always hope. And if we are already on the way, the whole family or the whole team of the Church expects us to play with all the rest in a united effort so that all us can make it to heaven. Our unity in the Catholic Church is a tremendous source of strength. Let’s profit from the example and the help of that great Cloud of Witnesses and make our own contribution as well for the sake of all our co-struggling brothers and sisters.