OMELIE / Omelie EN

01 nov 2024

01/11/2024 – ALL SAINTS DAY

01/11/2024 – ALL SAINTS DAY

Reading 1 REV 7,2-4.9-14 Psalm 23 Reading 2 1JN 3,1-3 Gospel MT 5,1-12

Today’s solemnity helps the Church to be introduced to the joy of the heavenly Jerusalem, the future city with strong foundations which welcomes the redempted people to sing God’s glory and the Lamb's. We all should be experts in this news: we live in this world, but we are not the world’s, we live in this world which is a valley of tears, the kingdom of sin and the subsequent suffering, but we keep our eyes on the heavens, because our desire is taking us there. Unfortunately, how many times we forget this! Forgetting the heavens is making us lose our way here on earth, is making us wander left and right pushed by our whims, selfishness, by what we feel and what we experience, towards unending illusions and delusions. Forgetting the heavens is making us forgetting we are brothers and sisters and is making us behave almost like animals, or even worse.

Today we are pushed to remember our final goal, the finish line of every step of ours and of our every decision. We look at the finish line by looking at how many brethren, loved by Jesus and carriers of His cross, are already there and are waiting for us. We can see the martyrs, who have borne testimony to God’s love and the Lord’s death and resurrection to the point of letting themselves be tortured and killed. We can see the confessors of the faith, who have testified too about being Jesus’s disciples to the point of being targeted by the rejection and the hatred of men. We can see the shepherds, who have spent their life following and guiding the flock of the faithful. We can see fathers and mothers of families, who have lived their marriage and their maternity and paternity in the name of the Lord. We can see monks and nuns, who have given everyone the daily proof of God’s prominence in men’s life. A cloud of the Lord’s witnesses is gathered around God’s throne and helps us get to know Him and desire Him!

Our eyes, which are drawn to contemplate the faith and the love of those who we call Saints, become lights to look at our journey here in a different way, free from the disruptive influence of money, pleasure, ambitions. We can see how the influence that these aspects have on many people’s heart is the reason for the injustices and the selfishness causing our suffering. So, we do not want to let us be swept away by the same situations: we would become also unjust, masters of others, incapable of love. By looking at these Saints we can see how they have transformed their world, the environment of their families and their society, they have transformed it in a way that love would become light and strength, God’s selfless love: they have done so by living with joy and perseverance the words that came from Jesus’s mouth. In this way they have been part of His life and His mission, they have shared His cross and now they share His glory.

The words which have guided the Saints are those which have come in our ears and our heart. Blessed…Blessed the poor in spirit…It is nice and strong to hear this words, in a world where everything seems decided by money. War and peace, harmony and fights between siblings and relatives, laws for the life of peoples, sickness and health, everything is decided by the power of the greed for money. The world, which is looking for peace, needs people who can take these words of Jesus’s seriously and show them as actual: are blessed, so happy and benefactors of men, those who long for poverty, freedom from money and wealth.

Blessed the pure of heart: in a world in which everything is driven by sexual pleasure, from the fashion of clothes to the reason for crimes, like abortion, exploitation of women and sexual violence on children, in this world there is the urgent need for people living with a pure heart. Who are the latter, if not the Christians? We cannot think we can find such people anywhere else, because the inner strength needed to live in poverty and purity can come only from the love for Jesus Christ: it does not come from atheism and not even from science, not from the beliefs put together by the religions of the world. Only Jesus with His cross can support the human weakness to live in a way becoming the man and God.

Today we look at the heaven. Among the crowd of the Saints we meet the deep eyes of Saint John Mary Vianney, the Saint curate of Ars. Born at the beginning of the French revolution, he was a child during the persecution of the priests. One of them, who had to live hidden, gave him the first Holy Communion while the family, in order to hide what was happening in the house, was unloading in front of the windows a cart full of hay. And he had to wait two years before being able to get the Holy Communion again! He has gone down the path of sanctity and he is describing it to us: “The crosses unite us to the Lord, purify us, distance us from this world, free our heart from every obstacle, help us go through life as a bridge helps cross a river”.