"I saw a great multitude which no man could count, of all nations and tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and in the sight of the Lamb of God, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands: and they cried with a loud voice, saying: "Salvation to our God." (Apoc.7: 9,10)

The great Feast of All Saints comes at the end of the farmers’ harvest season. All the bounty of the summer planting is harvested now and stored in the granaries and barns ready to be our food during the hard cold months of winter. The farmer takes stock of the bountiful supplies of food and gives thanks to God for good crops and abundant life.

And so the Church also takes stock of the abundant harvest of souls produced by the Blood of Jesus on the Cross applied to poor sinners like all of us. On this great Feast, She praises and glorifies the Holy Ghost for His unending and fruitful work of making so many millions of human souls resplendent in grace and sanctification. These souls have already been harvested by God and share in His glory in heaven. They will feed our souls by their example and prayers for us – our older brothers and sisters in Christ who now plead for our salvation at the Throne of God.

The Feast of All Saints is essentially a feast of the Holy Ghost whose work is to make men holy.

The reason the Feast of All Saints is one of the greatest Feasts of all is because it celebrates what would otherwise have been completely impossible to fallen man. The Cross is the tree that bears good fruit. The Feast of All Saints is the feast of the harvest of the Cross. Today we celebrate with the Church the great gift Jesus bought for us by His death. That is the possibility of perfecting human nature by the grace pouring from the side of Christ on the Cross, through His Church and His sacraments, remaking men after their fall in the garden of Eden.

Aside from all the beautiful things to be said about all the saints today and the many prayers to them on this day, we must understand in the marrow of our bones what the most important idea of this Feast is: "All God’s Saints, we are so glad for you. Now pray for us, so we will be in heaven, too." And we must add to this "Thank you Lord Jesus for making our holiness possible."

Let us begin the custom today, if we have not already done so in our families, the daily reading of the lives of the Saints which the Church lays before the eyes of our soul all through the Liturgical Year. We have been "born of God" in Baptism. We MUST know the Saints because they are able to teach us how to receive God’s will, to love it, to act immediately on it, to use the power He gave us to become the sons of God.

During this little time we are to be on earth, we have the ability to become God’s adopted sons separated from Heaven only by life in the body. The soul, made in God’s image and likeness is detained here for a little while by the body. The soul is being tested. The Saints went through this test or trial too. With the help of God’s grace and their obedience to His will, they overcame all trials and sufferings and were sanctified through them. They are now in glory, sons united with their loving Father at last.

This is the greatest of God’s mercies – our sanctification and salvation. God loved us before He created the world, and planned for us to be in eternity with Him. When sin spoiled the plan, God, as it were, perfected His plan with the Incarnation of His Son in the Virgin’s womb. God’s Son became man and spent Himself to form the means for our perfection.

The Saints used the means God devised for their perfection. We must too. Time is very short. The Church gives us this Feast of all Saints during the harvest time to show us the shortness of time and the necessity of using every minute of life and all our strength and talents to become perfected by God’s grace.

The Church gives us what we should be praying today and every day:

It would be impossible for the Church to commemorate solemnly, or even to mention in her liturgical year, every single saint whom she has ever canonized. From the earliest days of the Church, however, She has commemorated "All the Martyrs of the Entire World."

In the West the Feast of "All Holy Martyrs" was introduced when Emperor Phocas gave the pagan Roman temple of the Pantheon Pope Boniface lV (615). On May 13^th, The Pope claimed the temple for Christ by dedicating it as the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and All the Martyrs. The Pope had the relics of the saints, which were then in different Roman cemeteries taken up and placed in the Pantheon. From that time on, May 13^th was the Feast of Our Lady and All the Martyrs and was held every year for 200 years. Then Pope Gregory lV (844) ordered the commemoration not only of al the martyrs, but of all the saints and not only in the above-mentioned Church, but also in all the Churches of Christendom. In God’s provident care of His Church, Pope Gregory also transferred the Feast to November 1. He did this so that the thousands of pilgrims who came to Rome every year for "The Feast of the Pantheon" could be more easily fed after the harvest rather than in the spring.

Now this event of the Romans giving the Holy Father the Pantheon Temple to all their gods as a gift can only have been from the hand of God as you will see. When pagan Rome had completed the conquest of the world she dedicated to all her pagan gods, as a sign of her thanks, the Pantheon. The Pantheon was the strongest monument of Rome’s power. But when Rome herself was conquered by the love of Christ, and made by Him the empire over souls in His Church, Rome ended her worship of the false gods and offered her adoration to the one true God. She offered her love to all the martyrs of Christ instead. Even as Rome had killed the martyrs in the millions, she now adored the One true God and honored the Saints along with Mary their Queen. And so Rome truly became "eternal." Rome, through the hands of the Pope, now willed the consecration of the Pantheon to Mary and all the Martyrs and saints. Christ is indeed, the King and Lord of this World. Rome is now the See of the Pope and rightly called The Eternal City.

Finally, Pope Sixtus lV (1484) established the Feast of All Saints as a holyday of obligation for the entire Latin Church giving it a liturgical vigil and octave.

In the cycle of Feasts, the Festival of All Saints is placed at he close of the Liturgical or Church Year. It proclaims loudly: " All you holy men and women, saints of God, pray for us." We do not say "Have mercy on us." For only God can do this. Rather we say, "Pray for us." From this we can see clearly that Catholics do not adore the saints. We honor or venerate them as God’s friends and ours. No saint can help us by his own power, but only by praying for us to God who is almighty and who alone can be adored. It belongs to God to have mercy on us. The saints can only beg His help for us.

Did the Church "make up" the idea of honoring the saints? No! This comes from the Old Testament and is completely Scriptural. David, the Psalmist says: "Give praise to God in His saints." According to St. James the Apostle in his Epistle, even Christians on earth should pray much for one another. How then could the saints in Heaven forget their brothers and sisters still in exile on earth? Since the Bible tells us that the prayers of the good man on earth "availeth much", what may we not expect through the prayers of the glorified friends of God. Holy Scripture says of the Prophet Jeremiah, "He prayed much for the people and for all the holy city." (2 Mac.15: 14)

The Bible also speaks of the prayers of all the saints, which were offered in golden censers, and upon the golden altar that is before the Throne of God. (Apoc.)

This Feast which commemorates all the Saints of God also contains in itself an express command to imitate their example. St. Paul himself tells us this already when he said in Scripture: "Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ." (Cor. 4:16) This Feast brings forcibly to mind the words with which St. Augustine began his conversion: "If these could do it, why not I?"

In the Apostle’s Creed, the Church gives us the term "communion of saints." This is the union of all Catholics on earth called "The Church Militant" with all the souls in Purgatory who will, shortly be in Heaven and who are called "The Church Suffering" and all the members of the Church now in Heaven called "The Church Triumphant." We are all linked both here and in eternity because we are members of Christ in His Church. The Feast of All Saints reminds us of the reality of this Doctrine and of the we say daily in the Apostles Creed: "I believe in the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen" All of these truths are clearly put before us on the Feast of All Saints.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS FEAST? WHY DID THE POPES CONSIDER IT "SUCH A BIG DEAL?"

There are 4 important purposes for this great Feast. Do you know them?

1. This Feast Day is a day of great Thanksgiving especially to God, the Holy Ghost, for the countless graces He has given to so many million souls through the Church.
   
2. All Saints Day celebrates the triumph of Christ over pagan gods; it is the triumph of Grace over human nature. Above all it bears exultant witness to the success of Christ’s Church in Her work of saving souls by Her holy teaching and sanctifying powers given to Her by Christ. Especially does this Feast show the infinite power of the Holy Eucharist, which is both sacrifice and sacrament and by which sinners have become saints and an uncounted multitude has gained strength to walk the way of the Commandments and to live the Eight Beatitudes.
   
3. Because a very large number of Saints could not be given the honor of a special feast day since there are not enough days of the year for these individual celebrations, the Feast of All Saints gives them their due honor.
   
4. This Feast reminds the Faithful of the shortness of time on earth and the need for concentrating fully on their own sanctification using the Saints as their examples and encouragement and help. It reminds us of the Communion of Saints.
   
5. The 5^th reason was given by Pope Urban lV: "Any negligence, omission and irreverence committed in the celebration of the saints’ feasts throughout the year is to be atoned for by the faithful, and thus due honor may still be offered to these Saints on the Feast of All Saints."

How timely is this 5^th reason for us who live in a world where feast days are all but universally ignored and forgotten. Even holy days of obligation are considered an inconvenience for the faithful and many neglect to go to Mass even then. Saints are God’s gift to us. They draw us through their examples of heroic faith, hope and love to God. They even draw us, through the wisdom of the Church, to come closer to the Mass and the sacraments – our sure means of holiness. We ignore them at our own spiritual peril.

THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS and THE MIND OF THE CHURCH
The Feast of All Saints should be one of intense joy for all of us. It is the promise of our ability to be made holy also.

By placing this Feast at the END of the Liturgical Year, the Church wants to arouse in us a longing for heaven, which is our only goal on this earth. Through this Feast, the Church wants us to have confidence in the helping grace of the Holy Spirit and the prayers for us by our brothers and sisters who are already in heaven.

Today, ask yourself: "Do I really LONG for heaven? Or am I so busy about the things of this world that heaven is usually far from my daily thoughts and desires?" What must I do to change this?

It we have not understood it before, we learn today who the Saints are. Saints come from all classes of men, the poor, the rich, the old and young, the famous and unknown, men and women, children and adults, every race and nation on earth.

Saints were people just like us, but they took Jesus’ Gospel seriously; they took the 10 Commandments seriously and faithfully performed the duties of their state of life for the love of God and His glory. Many of them had been great sinners; but once they had allowed the grace of the Holy Spirit to shine in their souls, they gave up their sinful selfish ways and worked diligently to pursue holiness. They lived the Beatitudes.

The Saints allowed nothing – not earthly goods, money, honors, or temptations – to set them off their upward climb. They gave up life itself rather than risk losing sanctifying grace, and with it the sonship and friendship of God. Like us they were weak and erring men. But they cooperated fully with the promptings of Divine Grace and became champions of the love of God and neighbor, and even reflected Christ Himself to others around them.

St. Augustine tells us how we should look at being saints. "If these were able to accomplish it, why should I not be able to become a saint also?

When the Church tells us to honor the saints, she does not only mean keeping their feasts and praising them for their love of God. Primarily she means that we should imitate them daily. St. John Chrysostom says to us: "You, Christian, are a poor and ‘wimpy’ soldier if you imagine that you can be victorious over the devil without battle or triumph, without suffering and struggle. So, develop your strength, fight bravely, and struggle unendingly in this great war."

What does it meant to imitate the Saints? It means learning the lives of the Saints to help us know how to save our souls. It means being faithful to Christ’s Holy Church, faithful to Her teachings, to Her infinite and holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to Her holy Sacraments, to the Commandments and to live the Beatitudes. Then we shall be on the sure way to heaven, our eternal home.