Benedict XVI's Homily for All Saints' Day; "Holiness Demands a Constant Effort"
VATICAN CITY, NOV. 1, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the homily Benedict XVI gave during the Mass he presided over in St. Peter's Basilica today, the solemnity of All Saints.* * *
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Our Eucharistic celebration opened today with the exhortation "Let us rejoice in the Lord." The liturgy invites us to share the heavenly jubilation of the saints, to taste the joy. The saints are not a restricted caste of elect but a crowd without number toward which, today, the liturgy exhorts us to lift our eyes.
Among this multitude are not only the officially recognized saints but the baptized of every age and nation who have sought to accomplish the divine will with love and fidelity. Many there are whose faces and names we do not know but with the eyes of faith we see them shine like stars full of glory in the divine firmament.
Today the Church celebrates her dignity as "mother of the saints, image of the eternal city" (Alessandro Manzoni), and manifests her beauty as immaculate bride of Christ, the source and exemplar of all holiness. She does not lack for riotous and indeed rebellious children, but it is in the saints that she recognizes her characteristic traits and precisely in them she savors her deepest joy.
In the first reading the author of the Apocalypse describes "a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people and tongue" (Revelation 7:9). This people comprises the saints of the Old Testament, beginning with Abel the just and the patriarch Abraham, and then those of the New Testament, the many martyrs at the beginning of Christianity, the blessed and the saints of the ages that followed, and finally the witnesses of Christ in our own time. What was common to them was the will to incarnate the Gospel in their existence through the impulse of the Holy Spirit, who is the eternal giver of life of the people of God.
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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 8:04 PM
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