Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
A most blessed and happy Feast Day to all of you! This weekend, on November 1, we mark not only the great celebration of All Saints Day, but also with great solemnity and joy our parish feast day.
I’ve heard it said that the founding members of the parish couldn’t decide after which saint they wanted to name their new Catholic parish, so they tongue-in-cheek requested the patronage of ALL of them. If it ain’t true, it oughta be.
The great message surrounding All Saints Day is that the holiness of life that makes someone a saint is actually achievable.
As I preached on last week, what makes each of the portraited or statued saints on our walls “saints” is that they simply loved the Lord with all their heart, mind, and soul. That’s the common thread in all of their lives. Some were scholars, some were martyrs, some opened orphanages and homes for the poor, some were tireless prayer warriors, some endured unthinkable suffering without giving in to despair. Their stories are as unique as their fingerprints, but the motivation behind their perseverance, their charity, their courage, their fidelity was their love of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s a choice that you and I can choose to make each moment of each day.
All Saints Day celebrates the widely known saints, the lesser-known canonized saints, and especially the completely unknown saints, as a saint is anyone who is in Heaven, regardless of whether they have been so declared officially by the Church. There are hopefully countless numbers of these saints who are forever praising God and interceding for us here below; faithful spouses and parents, siblings, children, friends, neighbors all whose love of the Lord Jesus Christ changed them, and “washed clean by the Blood of the Lamb,” they lived their lives as a gift received from Him.
The French novelist Léon Bloy once quipped “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.” I pray that the witness and the intercession of the whole Communion of Saints inspires each of us individually and as a parish family to trust the Lord a little more, to love and serve Him a little more, that we would day by day become the saints He is inviting us to be.
Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever!
Blessed Fr. Pedro de Corpa and Companions, pray for us!
ALL YOU HOLY SAINTS, pray for us!
Peace in Christ,
Fr. Michael Silloway
Pastor