November 1st | "All Saints'" Day by Miguel Cabedo e Vasconcelos

All Saints' Day, a great feast day for the Church, has its roots in the early Church. In Antioch, in what is now Turkey, we have reports since the fourth century of the celebration of the memory of the martyrs, who were remembered by the first Christians as heroes of the faith, who had remained faithful despite adversity and persecution. Between the 8th and 9th centuries, this feast began to spread throughout Christendom, reaching the West, and in Rome, in the 8th century, Pope Gregory III (731-741) wanted this feast to be celebrated on November 1st, coinciding with the consecration of a Chapel in St. Peter's Basilica dedicated to the memory of "the holy Apostles, the holy martyrs and confessors, and all the Just, who have reached perfection and rest in peace in the eternal world.

St. Bernard of Claraval, in the 12th century, helps us understand the meaning of this day: «Why praise the saints, why glorify them? Why, finally, this solemnity? What do the saints care about earthly honors? They whom, according to the promise of the Son, the heavenly Father glorifies? The saints do not need our honors. There is no doubt about it: if we venerate the saints, it is in our interest, not theirs.» It is indeed in our own interest that we remember and praise the saints. And in this sense, I think that we can think of this day and this feast under three different aspects: centering, decentering and "transcentering".

First of all, we celebrate All Saints' Day so that the witness of so many women and men throughout history may strengthen our own journey of faith. We need, in fact, to focus on the spiritual life we are leading, knowing that God sees in us the holiness of which we are capable, believes in it and wants to bring it out, precisely as he did with the Christians who preceded us and are with him today in Heaven. To know the lives of the saints, their spiritual struggles, their dilemmas on this earth, the criteria with which they made the fundamental decisions of their existence, the enthusiasm with which they converted and changed their lives, the great love they had for God; all this makes us realize that being a saint is not only for the special ones; on the contrary, being a saint is possible, it is good, it is happy, and it is for me. In fact, this seems to me to be a fundamental aspect: knowing and celebrating the saints who have gone before us in time also helps us understand that holiness has more to do with human nature than any other reality, being holy is more true to my identity than any other ambition, being holy takes more seriously the stuff we are made of than any other way of life, even those ways of living that are so enviable in the eyes of the world. It is for holiness that we were made. In this regard, let us look, for example, at life and at the words of St. Augustine: «Too late have I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and ever new! Too late I loved you! Behold, you were inside, and I was outside - and outside I sought you, and cast myself, shapeless and not at all beautiful, before the beauty of everything and everyone that you created. You were with me, and I was not with you.»

In the same way, we remember the example of the saints also in order to learn from them what it means to love others, by decentering ourselves from ourselves, and getting down from ourselves, by truly emptying ourselves, by putting the interests of others first. It is about taking seriously what Jesus said - "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me" (Mt 25:40) - and living in depth the inner logic of love, which is always reciprocal. In reality, it is only when we risk living love with the elevation with which Jesus lived it, that we get a glimpse of the dimension of the love that God has for us. And what is this elevation? It is the love that leads one to turn the other cheek, to give the tunic to the one who steals the cloak, to walk two miles with the one who forces us to walk one mile (cf. Mt 5:39-40), it is an exaggerated and abundant love, as the saints lived it. It is worth, in this regard, to remember St. Teresa of Calcutta, whose life is a radical testimony of forgetfulness of self for the sake of others, for the poorest of the poor.

Finally, we celebrate All Saints' Day because we are part of a community that does not look to itself, but looks to heaven and aspires to heaven. The saints teach us to "transcenter" our existence, that is, to contemplate God's eternity, and to recognize that we were made not only for holiness in this world - which would already be so much - but for heaven, for God, for the true life to which we are called. In a sense, the lives of the saints are a reminder of the perishability of this world and this time, and a clear and almost glaring reminder of the ultimate destiny of all humanity. In fact, the saints have lived and live in this world committed to building the "city of men", but knowing that it is not here that their existence is definitively fulfilled, certain that their true homeland is the "city of God" and that they are journeying there. This is the experience, for example, of St. Bruno who, in the great silence of the Cartuxa, made his relationship with God the only nourishment of his life.

Holiness is, in fact, the architecture with which God has dreamed our lives. And celebrating the saints who traveled this path before us can be transformative.

Pe. Miguel Cabedo e Vasconcelos