All Saints' Day

Alleluia.
Salvation, glory, and power to our God:
Alleluia.
his judgments are honest and true.
Alleluia. Alleluia.

Alleluia.
Sing praise to our God, all you his servants,
Alleluia.
all who worship him reverently, great and small.
Alleluia. Alleluia.

Alleluia.
The Lord our all-powerful God is King;

Alleluia.
let us rejoice, sing praise, and give him glory.
Alleluia. Alleluia.

Alleluia.
The wedding feast of the Lamb has begun,
Alleluia.
and his bride is prepared to welcome him.
Alleluia. Alleluia.

See Revelation 19

The beauty of the Gospel is fully alive in the saints.

Today is the Solemnity of All Saints and also the third anniversary of the day that I decided to be Catholic. It was best decision I have ever made. There is nothing like going along for the ride on the Barque of St. Peter. One of my greatest joys these last three years has been getting to know the saints. I knew about some of them: those living in the apostolic age, of course, and saints like Augustine and Athanasius. When one enters the one Church Jesus Christ founded, however, the veil rolls back and a host of saints is revealed. They are one of the greatest gifts God gives to us who are sojourning on earth. Why the saints you ask? Because the saints bear witness to the fruit of Christ Jesus’ love for mankind. Their lives are, in a sense, the beauty of the Gospel. The Gospel is not just an idea that we assent to, it is a life that we live by uniting ourselves with the Word made flesh. The saints lived lives totally converted to our Lord Jesus. They can do nothing in themselves, but they all can say with St. Paul, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (1)!”

As sharers in the body of Christ, the saints take up their crosses and follow in his footsteps. They live the life of Christ. They participate in him. “This is my commandment to you, love one another as I have loved you (2).” Take the Blessed Virgin Mary for instance. She never wavered in her devotion to Christ, and she bore her cross at his feet during his Passion. She reflected the blessedness of his suffering in hers. Pope Benedict XVI, in a homily on the the Feast of All Saints, stated beautifully:

“Thus, we have come to the Gospel of this feast, the proclamation of the Beatitudes which we have just heard resound in this Basilica. Jesus says: Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed those who mourn, the meek; blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, the merciful; blessed the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted for the sake of justice. In truth, the blessed par excellence is only Jesus. He is, in fact, the true poor in spirit, the one afflicted, the meek one, the one hungering and thirsting for justice, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemaker. He is the one persecuted for the sake of justice. The Beatitudes show us the spiritual features of Jesus and thus express his mystery, the mystery of his death and Resurrection, of his passion and of the joy of his Resurrection. This mystery, which is the mystery of true blessedness, invites us to follow Jesus and thus to walk toward it (3).”

As an artist, I am always thinking about colors. Imagine if you will that the superabundant merits that Jesus won for us on the cross are all the colors on a color wheel (the beatitudes!) with Jesus being the color wheel itself. Now imagine that each of the saints represents one swatch on that wheel. No matter its hue, saturation or lightness, each color exists within the spectrum of the color wheel, and each color, or saint, is different from all the other ones. All the colors together show the beauty of the color wheel, and so the saints themselves together, show the beauty of the body of Christ. Not that Christ needs theses saints, for it is through his love that he uses us—the same love that created the world not because he needed to, but because he loved what he was to create. Therefore he delights to use us: his colors, his saints, his members that make up his body. He delights to use us, because he wants to share his divine life with us, because love, as both the recipient and the giver, is the greatest thing anyone can experience.

The saints are beautiful. To look at the saint is to behold the face of Jesus. By their union with Christ and each other through the gathering around the eucharistic table, they are changed—changed into Jesus: “yet it is not I, but Christ living in me (4).” To be a saint is to empty oneself as Christ did and to live for another. And in a sense in this emptying, Christ is really filling us with himself. The saints do not hide Christ in a sea of faces—no!—they all standing pointing to the Lamb of God saying with his Mother: “My soul proclaims proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior (5)!” “No creature could ever be counted along with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer; but just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways both by his ministers and the faithful, and as the one goodness of God is radiated in different ways among his creatures, so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a sharing in this one source (6).”

The Catholic Church, possessing the fullness of the gifts of divine life by the power of the Holy Spirit, channels the grace of Jesus Christ (sacraments) to the faithful. Acts tells us that the faithful devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles, the breaking of bread and of prayers. This is the Mass. The breaking of bread, or as we call it, the Eucharist, is the participation in Jesus Christ himself. The body, blood, soul and divinity of Our Lord and Savior is made really, truly and substantially present in the form of bread and wine for our salvation. Jesus, the God-Man and our passover, upon his resurrection, opens the door to life beyond death. He took the eternal divine, which is timeless, and finite creation, which exists within time, united them in his person and ascended into heaven. The incarnation of Jesus Christ continues because “things of heaven are wed to those of earth, and divine to the human (7).” Following St. Paul, this small band of Christians that shared in one loaf as one body soon realized that this (eucharistic) communion goes far beyond the unity of those on earth. “A cosmic breath very soon entered into the concept of Church: the communion of saints spoken of [in the creed] extends beyond the frontier of death; it binds together all those who have received the one spirit and his one, life-giving power (8).” There is but one Church—one body. There is only one who unites the saints in heaven to those those of earth, one who has has passed over to death and unites all beyond it, one who even now waits for you in the stillness of a whisper, in the bread of the saints: Our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is this union of divine love with the Word Incarnate that allows us to say with St. Thomas Aquinas:

“I pray that You bring me, a sinner, to the indescribable Feast where You, with Your Son and the Holy Spirit, are to Your saints true light, full blessedness, everlasting joy, and perfect happiness. Through the same Christ our Lord (9).”

Here's a list of popular Catholic saints, for your perusal.

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1. Philippians 4:13.

2. John 15:12
3. Benedict XVI. "Homily on Holy Mass on the Solemnity of All Saints," Vatican Basilica, 1 Nov 2006.
4. Galatians 2:20
5. Magnificat, Luke 1:46-47.
6. Lumen Gentium, 62.
7. Exsultet
8. Ratzinger, Joseph. Introduction to Christianity, 334-35.
9. Aquinas, Thomas. "Prayer of Thanksgiving After Mass."