It is not hard to understand why it is absolutely essential for us to celebrate Christmas and Easter. It is certainly in keeping with the third commandment, that all Catholics are obligated to go to Mass every Sunday. But why do we celebrate this feast day, with such solemnity, giving it such great importance, that every Catholic in the world needs to go to Church this day?
All Saints Day is a surprisingly old feast. It arose out of the Christian tradition of celebrating the anniversary of the death of a martyr. The Martyrs gave the ultimate witness to Christ, witnessing to Him with their very life, they were faithful to the very end, and so were celebrated by the Church of needing no further purification after death, and so they went directly to God in heaven as Saints.
Soon, the number of martyrs became so abundant because of the persecutions of those early centuries, that a common feast day—an All Saints Day—would ensure that all the martyrs, known and unknown, were properly honored.
But this feast day isn’t a holy day of obligation simply because it is over one thousand six hundred years old. Nor is it a holy day of because we are celebrating a select-few, a handful of spiritual heroes. I think it is a holy day of obligation because it reminds us that becoming a saint is the ordinary goal of the Christian life. The whole purpose of the Church: the purpose of baptisms, eucharist, priests and sacramental marriages, the purpose of learning our catechism, engaging in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, fasting, doing penance, going to confession, the purpose of all of the things, every action of the Church is to make saints.
The only people who go to heaven are saints. Only those who prepare their souls rightly in this life, and those who are purified in purgatory, go to heaven. And that is the whole purpose of the Church, is to help you and me, and every person who seeks God, get to heaven.
This feast reminds us, that the only thing that really matters in life, is being holy, so that we can be with God forever in heaven. You can be the richest person in the world, but if you do not become a saint, you have wasted your life. You can be the best athlete, the most talented musician, the most skilled doctor, the most famous actor in Hollywood, but if you do not become a saint, becoming the person God wants you to be, you have wasted your life.
Becoming a saint should be what we think of every day, it’s what we should worry about and strive for most. And how many of us really worry about this? Think of all the time we spend fussing about non-essentials, reputation, entertainment, physical appearance, social standing, while neglecting the most essential, our sanctity.
Non-essentials can be so dangerous because they can lead us away from God; we all know how non-essentials can lead us not to pray as we should, not to love our family as we should, not to give to our neighbor as we should, not to go to Church as we should. Non-essentials can even lead us to losing our place in heaven, forever, if we allow them to consume us.
Today we give honor to all those saints, saints we know, saints who have been canonized by the Church, and those saints who passing from this life still needing some purification are now with God. We honor them and they teach us, plead with us, to put Jesus first, to put sanctity first. On this Holy Day, we celebrate, that in the end, the only thing that matters is: do I love Jesus Christ with my whole heart, my whole mind, and am I doing everything in my power to become like Him, am I doing everything I can to be with Him and His Saints forever, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
No comments:
Post a Comment