St. Norbert's Church - Sunday Reflections

This year the Solemnity of All Saints takes precedence over the Sunday liturgy. This celebration honors all those who have died and are now with the Lord. Traditionally we say it honors those who have already been purified and are in the full presence of God's love. Tomorrow, on All Souls' Day, we shall pray for those who have died and are in need of purification.

For most of us, there is a question about what it means to be a saint. It is a good question because often we think only of the extraordinary saints who have been proclaimed saints by the Church. We have to be honest and say that we do not know how all of this works but we know one thing: God loves us and invites each one of us to be a saint. All we have to do is try to be faithful to God's will in our lives and live with God's love. Of course we will fail in these attempts but we can always get up and try again. It is this loving God of ours who can accomplish this transformation in us, but only if we keep trying to be faithful and loving.

Our joy today is about having this inner longing to be like the saints - not in some unreal way but in our desire to know and to serve the living God. Each of us has his or her own way to holiness because God created each one of us as a special gift of divine love. Part of living is to discover this individual and unique gift of God's love in our life. Again, the only way to do this is to try to be faithful and loving.

The first reading, from the Book of Revelation, tells us about the uncountable numbers of saints. God chooses us and we must respond: salvation comes from our God! Always the initiative of grace comes from this God who loves us and invites us to share His life. If we are pure of heart, it is because we are washed in the blood of the Lamb. Jesus dies for us and His blood, his love for us, washes us clean if we will only accept Him.

The second reading, from the First Letter of Saint John, tells us that we are God's children now. We don't know how it will be in the Kingdom that will come but now we are God's children. The implication, of course, is that we shall be so much more than we are now. We shall be like Him. We shall be pure just as He is pure.

The Gospel gives us the beatitudes. These are ways of following the Lord. We don't have to think that we must live each beatitude. Rather, we will know in each situation what we must do if we are living in the Spirit. There is so much to be thankful for. God is not setting out to trip us up and make impossible conditions for the Kingdom of Heaven. Rather God is telling us that the road to heaven is doing His will and letting go of our own. We will suffer - this is always a condition of the Kingdom. We suffer because we must let go of all that we might prefer to God's will. Most of us get caught up in pleasures of one type or the other; we get caught up in judging others; we find ourselves attached to what we want to do rather than to seeking God's will. We suffer when we begin to choose what God wants.

When we love someone or something, we are quite willing to suffer for a cause or for a person. As we come deeper into the love of God, we are more willing to suffer everything so that we can live in that Divine Presence more and more. The canonized saints teach us this but the example of all those who seek God in humility and in the everyday awareness of their failures also speaks eloquently of the love of God growing through suffering. May the saints in heaven intercede for us today that we may walk in their paths and choose to follow our Lord.