All Saints Day 2018 - Children of God

As a student here at Holy Family School, or in your youth, you may have been asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” As a kid, I remember enjoying reading the comic strips in the newspaper, like Bill Waterson's "Calvin and Hobbes" and Gary Larson's "The Far Side". And so for a time, I wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist, that’s before I realized I can’t draw. If I were to ask the young people in our congregation here today, I’d bet I’d come up with a whole host of answers: a professional athlete, an astronaut, a doctor, a truck driver, a professional dancer, an artist, musician, a soldier; perhaps one or two might be thinking of being a priest or a nun.

No matter the profession, I bet every single one of us could answer that question, “when I grow up, I want to be happy.” No one wants to grow up to be sad or bored.

There are a lot of things that may cause us unhappiness, sadness in life: not becoming as successful as we thought we should, not having the house or car or job that we thought we should, perhaps losing a loved one before we were ready. It was the French philosopher Leon Bloy who said, “There is really only one sadness in life, not to be a saint.” For if each of us have been made by God to become holy, to be a saint, the only real sadness, is to not become the person God made us to be, happy with him in heaven for eternity.

If you had to choose between all of the material wealth, power, and fame the world could give you and being a saint, if you choose anything but becoming a saint, you’ve chosen wrong.

The saints show us what it means to be truly alive—to have truly lived a good life. Life is not meant to be all about the pursuit of material things, earthly things, but spiritual things, heavenly things.
In the Gospel today, did Jesus say blessed are you when you win trophies for your athletic accomplishments? No. Did he say, blessed are you when you are well known in your professional field? No. Did he say, blessed are you if you have more friends, more money than other people? No.
What did he say? Blessed are you when you are merciful, blessed are you when you are pure of heart. The beatitudes are the key to true human flourishing and true human happiness.

And today we celebrate those individuals who made the beatitudes the most important pursuit in their lives—saints like those our second graders are dressed-up as today. Francis, Mother Theresa, Saint Clare, Saint Patrick. If you want a truly good life, become like them. Don’t just learn their names, learn the love they had for Jesus, learn the love they had for fasting, prayer, spreading the Gospel, charity toward the poor.

Why is there so much unhappiness, boredom, perversion in the world? Because instead of seeking to become saints, we turn to trivial, selfish pursuits.

Today is a celebration of those who turned away from selfishness, and immersed themselves in lives of mercy, into the life of Christ. They choose to fully embrace their identity as children of God.

Any of the saints would tell you: don’t get swept up with all of the distractions in the world. Being a saint means saying “no” to a lot of things—things which seek to ruin our friendship with Jesus, things that seek to corrupt our minds, sour our hearts, and corrupt our souls. But we say “no” to the things of the world, because of our great desire to say “yes” to God with all of our being.

We all of us today recognize our own call to become saints, and come to thank God for this great cloud of witnesses who teach us what it really means to be Christian, what it really means to be human, what it really means to be children of God, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.