Featured readings:
Rev. 7 I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.”
All the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures.
They prostrated themselves before the throne, worshiped God, and exclaimed:
“Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power, and might be to our God forever.”
Beatitudes Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, there is the kingdom of heaven.
Homily Intro
Happy All Saint’s Day and All Hallow’s Eve (Een)! Back in the days of being a young person in a few suburbia neighborhoods that were hosting trick-or-treater children, I faintly recall my choosing to be an angel for Halloween. A white gown with sparkling silver sequins was easy enough to wear and walk in, with my jeans and white (Keds) sneakers on beneath and below. The wings were a little harder to manage, making no quick turns or else I might hit another kid with a swinging wing. The halo was the toughest part of the costume, of trying to keep it stay on my head—especially while running from house to house. After stopping too many times to fix the halo, I think I took it off and ditched it on somebody’s porch. Yes, a halo might be the hardest part of not only an angel’s outfit, but of a practicing Catholic seeking to be a saint. You’d might want to ditch the halo, too—if it deterred you from a huge night of say, candy collecting.
Yet from my childhood, angels did represent the holy to me. They were placed in churches I attended, they were faithfully at our home’s Christmas manger scene, and I knew they were the original artists of the Gloria song. I also had heard Bible stories of them, and I had children’s books with angels depicted in them—and my grandma had given me a Guardian Angel plaque for next to my bed. I recall all that back to childhood days. Then in the seminary I learned that even the great learned men of the Church believed in angels, like Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas.
In All Saint’s Mass, not so surprisingly, then, do we hear in the opening Revelation reading being about God and His angels, with His plan to use them well to the end of times to wrap up earth’s history, to move to the new. God also asks his angels to assist in His leading us disciples of Christ onto His path of righteousness, of getting Heaven-bound. Those are normal uses of angels by God, but you might have a personal story of a further involvement of angels helping you. Like, with me, seeing an angelic moment in a Mass here, though it was meant to be a private revelation for just two people here. I was a witness that they weren’t imagining things’ but God has His direction to give to them. I have heard from some of you in the parish of having some kind of angelic visitation, here and there. While angels are also helping, mostly they are modest and unseen in their work.
I mention them on All Saints Day because angels and saints and saints-in-the-making are meant to serve, work, and praise God together. In our freedom, we have the great guide of the Beatitudes for eight clear practices to be heading on for the kingdom of heaven. Jesus listed them out first for His apostles, but now there are out for us. Gong next over each of the eight beatitudes, I’d like to point out how the angels may be helping in all of them for our blessedness. .
As the 8 Beatitudes of Jesus proclaim ways for us to be blessed, I believe these perfect angels are involved to help us get into a “happy holy” state—“blessed.”
1. Being poor in spirit—you know your place as a servant of God, not a rival or rebel. Holy angels inspire this—and they practice it forever. As we humans are embodied spirits, we know that selfishness must be emptied out, and humble servanthood to God be filled up and in us. 2. Being a blessed who mourns person means to be a deeply caring and other-centered person. It’s a mourning or a groaning within us, led by God’s spirit, to deeply care for others, and care well for our own spiritual and physical needs. In their caring manner, angels are told to be comforting spirits. I would bet many of you have had their service in your lives over some wound or hurt or loss. 3. Being meek to inherit the land means that you are a person acting in life as a steward, just like the Genesis paradise plan showed, and your part is in being a receiver of God’s offerings, and acting as a channel for blessing—you are not forcing things, nor demanding and pushing for your way—the world and heaven are God’s to give and share, not first yours. We live to take part with God in His creation, humbly showing respect to Life and all that is in being God’s possession, and one of our key services to God, done in freedom, is our praise to God—all very due to the Lord. Being meek is not to be weak. It’s being God confident that what we give up temporarily is a praise to God who has made a way to Heaven for us. (I show in the bulletin some examples, and how our Lady, Queen of the Saints and Angels, has asked us to join her in a task for peace—one to take seriously—in being meek. The meek will inherit the earth, and Our Lady is a model of its truth.
4.Being a person who hunger or thirsts for right to prevail, puts them on the radar for angels’ service, for they are here, too, for the advance the kingdom of God and His righteousness. We’re glad to have angelic help. Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount, soon after the beatitudes list, for us to “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” How can we do it?
There’s a household family who gives out free New Testaments for Youth (the kind with lots of guides and illustrations in them) as their Halloween treat, to help steer youth aright, but that treat comes along with a large candy prize. They are trying to help feed a youth’s inner hunger. 5.That same family practices the next beatitude, of being merciful. They saw that many young people could benefit if they made a welcome cut through their property over to the school. Mercifully, they made a walkway through their backyard, moving a chain-link fence, so people could get through a patch of woods and over to the local school. Many youth took that short-cut, and the home owners said: “it just was right to help give the neighborhood a great short-cut through our yard—and it gives us good satisfaction to help them all out—just like the beatitude says.”
Mercy is also about forgiveness, of course. His family is not only going in outreaching, but also in forgiving one another, too. Mercy starts with a humility of self.
6. Moving to another Beatitude, mercy segues well to being a peacemaker. Being a peacemaker is to be a person of change or contradiction to the hostility, aggression and hatred in the world. I give examples of this in today’s spirituality column of people who gave such example even in a surprising place of post-war Japan and the Catholic missions there. It’s an inspiration for us sowing peace in our times, where war is going on or its near-start in far too many places.
7. Being pure of heart or clean of heart is to join into the divine and the holy, and to get back to the original intention of humanity—to bless God and live for holiness and fullness’ sake. The Scriptures say to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to receive the abundant life that Jesus gives—not as the world gives. The angels know of this abundancia. I think it explains why the angels are so known for their praise of God, and if you live clean of heart, then a way to know it is that you’ll be praising God more.
8.The eight beatitude, which brings us back to finding the kingdom of heaven and its promise, is to suffer for doing good, or to make sacrifice. The Lord’s angels saw the depth of the Blessed Son’s sacrifice, and now try to have humanity bring back a thanksgiving to God thorough our response to Jesus. The angels join the saints in singing of the great worthiness of Christ Jesus to be our Savior.
This is a fast review of our hope to be blessed, to be God’s Beatitudinal people. I hope it helps you on your checklist for All Saint’s Day.