Solemnity of All Saints
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
November 1 2026
A Feast of No Excuses
We might think about the Feast of All Saints as the feast of no excuses. It puts on display holy men and women from every time and place. Women and men who were married and unmarried, women and men who raised families, worked on farms, in offices and factories, and at home, women and men who were poor and rich, educated and unschooled. Religious sisters, brothers, popes, priests – and yes, even a few bishops. In this feast, all the saints who ever lived are ganging up to challenge us, as if to say: “Well, what about you? Do you also want to become a saint?”
The II Vatican Council reminds us of something the Church has always taught: All of God’s people are called to holiness, to sainthood. This means that saints aren’t just heroic people from the past – holiness is something that you and I can attain now, in our daily lives. St. John Paul II taught that “holiness is the ordinary measure of the Christian life.” Or, as Pope Leo said more recently, “Holiness is not a privilege for a few, but a gift that commits every baptized person to strive for the perfection of charity.” Holiness isn’t optional but essential if we’d be the Lord’s followers and co-workers.
Today’s Scriptures are a blueprint for responding to our baptismal call holiness. They show the way to an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, forged in Word and Sacrament – that leads us to the perfection of love: loving God with all that is within us and loving those around us with the same generous and passionate love with which God loves us. Let’s read this blueprint together.
Today’s Scripture: A Blueprint for Holiness
In the reading from the Book of Revelation, the Apostle John has a vision of heaven – an overwhelmingly awesome sight. There is God the Father in all his ancient glory and with him is Jesus, the Lamb of God. Myriads of angels surround them in heavenly splendor. Who else is there? Of course, there’s the Blessed Mother – Mary Our Queen, the apostles, the martyrs, and the Church’s canonized saints and blesseds. But there are many others: “…a great multitude, which no one could count, from every race, people, and tongue…” In that multitude there are people just like us: people who liked what we like and disliked what we dislike; people from similar backgrounds, with similar strengths and limitations – enough like us to dispel the illusion that the call to holiness is meant for somebody else and not ourselves.
And, by the way, what are all those people doing in heaven? They’re worshiping God day and night with inexpressible joy. They’re participating in the great liturgy of heaven of which the Eucharist, the Mass is the foretaste. So, here’s a takeaway: if we don’t like going to Mass on Sunday or think that worshiping God takes too much time … if that’s what we think, then eternity really might seem, well, like an eternity. If we want to rejoice in heaven, we need to develop a taste for worship on earth: a love for the Mass and the Sacraments, openness to the abundant graces they offer, gratitude, because they prepare us to worship with all the saints in heaven.
Moving to the second reading from the 1st Letter of John: It was written to encourage early Christian communities as they faced internal problems and external persecution. John’s encouragement to those early Christians should also encourage us. Yes, there are problems in the Church – always have been, always will be. And there are problems at home, at work, in our relationships, coupled with uncertainty about the future. John writes to remind you and me that, in midst of it all, life is worth living: “We are God’s children now” [he says] and someday “we shall see [God] as he is.” John is telling us, we’re not there yet but we can get there step by step: spending a some time each day praying and reading Scripture; deciding not to participate in gossip; mending a broken relationship; addressing some pattern of sinful behavior; reaching out generously to those in need; confessing our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation; making Sunday Mass the centerpiece of our week. These are small, daily steps we can take towards holiness.
But taking those daily steps should not be a grim march through life; rather, they should be sources of joy – of beatitude or blessedness. That’s what Jesus teaches us in today’s Gospel, the Beatitudes. But the joy Jesus offers is no ordinary joy but the deep-down joy we’re longing for, that joy which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit’s action in our souls. Jesus’ recipe for holiness and happiness is not the ordinary stuff: it’s being poor in spirit; mourning over evil and sin; being meek and lowly; hungering for justice; showing mercy; being clean of heart and peacemakers; even being ready to suffer persecution for the sake of holiness. Some might say, “If that’s recipe for happiness, what’s the recipe for unhappiness?” But the saints pull us back from that, because they found Jesus in the Beatitudes. Somewhere along the line, they realized that the Beatitudes are Jesus’ self-portrait. He’s the One who’s poor in spirit; meek and mild; the One who died because of sin; the One who hungers and thirsts for us to share in his love; the One who is pure and single-hearted in his love for us and for the Father; the One who made peace by the blood of his Cross! We find happiness and joy in the measure that we are like Christ. And that means we intentionally inviting him to transform us from the inside out, so that we become living images and witnesses of his truth, love, and goodness.
“If I’m Not Becoming a Saint, Then I Am Doing Nothing”
St. Theresa of Avila once said, “If I am not becoming a saint, then I am doing nothing.” Friends, we find our happiness and joy when we decide to lead Christ-centered lives, daily transformed by the Holy Spirit, lives capable of conquering evil with good and hatred with love.
So dear friends, let us be of good cheer! This is the feast day not only of the unsung heroes who made it to heaven. It is our feast day too! We, no less than they, are called to sainthood. What’s more, that joyful throng in heaven is rooting for us, cheering us onward, and hoping one day to welcome us into their company! Let us respond to them and to the Lord by growing in holiness day by day. All you holy men and women, saints of God, pray for us!