Christ the Cornerstone

The saints show us how to live and give us hope

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. (Mt 5:12)

Tomorrow, we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints. This is the day when all the holy women and men (alive and deceased) who have given their lives to discover and do God’s will are given the thanks and praise that is their due.

The saints that we venerate tomorrow would be the first to tell us that God alone is worthy of our praise and that, at best, theirs is a reflective glory. It’s true—the light that shines in them is the light of Christ. Even the sinless Virgin Mary, whom we honor as the first and most glorious of all the saints, is just a mirror image of the beauty and majesty of her Divine Son, Jesus Christ.

Saints are icons of the living God. By imitating Jesus in their daily lives—never perfectly but with increasing success made possible by the power of the Holy Spirit—these very diverse men and women show us by their example, and by their teaching, how to respond to the universal call to holiness that is extended to every baptized follower of Jesus.

We can become holy (saints) by living the eight beatitudes given to us by Christ and proudly proclaimed in the Gospel reading for tomorrow’s Solemnity (Mt 5:1-12a). Jesus said to his disciples (all of us):

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. (Mt 5:3-12)

This is the way to become a saint. If we do these things consistently, with humility and generosity, our reward will be great in heaven. Jesus says so, and he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

But of course, each of the eight Beatitudes goes against the grain. Each one challenges us to surrender our egos, our pride, our self-pity, our thirst for vengeance, and our intense desire to fight back when we are insulted or treated badly. We like the idea of peace, but we don’t want to have to surrender in order to win. We know there’s more to life than wealth, fame and good fortune, but we also resist the practical consequences of poverty, prejudice and suffering (mental, physical or emotional).

Jesus knows that it’s hard for us to live as he did. We are weak and sinful people. The heroic virtues do not come easily to us. That’s why the Church urges us to look at all the saints—those who are well known and those who are hidden (the “next door saints”). None of them except Mary was without sin, and some of them committed grave sins before they finally saw the light of Christ and surrendered their lives to him.

There is a popular saying that “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” The truth of this saying is what gives us hope. We, too, can cast off selfishness and sin, and begin to live as missionary disciples of Jesus Christ. We are pilgrims of hope, which means that we know we have not yet arrived. We are on the way, and as another popular saying puts it, “We claim spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection.”

Tomorrow’s second reading from the first letter of St. John (1 Jn 3:1-3) affirms this truth. We have not yet arrived, but we have hope in our Lord Jesus Christ who shows us the way:

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure. (1 Jn 3:2-3)

Let us give thanks and praise to God for all the men, women and children who reflect the light of Christ in our world’s darkness. May his light shine in us as we walk together in the footsteps of so many others in the Communion of Saints. †