All Saints Day; Standing on the Edge of Eternity

There will be a lot of preaching and writing regarding the souls who are the “Church Triumphant” from whom we will also seek their prayers. It is not just a crown of victory that each of us will also look forward to but the final point after death that brings a relationship with God and our time to praise and worship with loved ones to the grace of Christ who died and rose for all of us.

As we remember those who have gone ahead of us, let's look into the probability of joining with them as we are sent to accomplish the very mission that we were called to do as well. Each one was called to evangelize one or more persons and we are also being called by God to reach the many who are still lost.

The Apostles were called by Christ to reach people out to the ends of the world. (Mt 28: 19 - 20). Jesus was sent by his Father through the Incarnation to find and bring home the Jews of Israel. (Lk 2: 8 - 14). St. Francis of Assisi was sent to repair God’s Church. He certainly accomplished that.

We could reflect on many events that we were sent by the Holy Spirit to become a guide for God’s choice of a soul that without us they may have never reached what is waiting for them in eternity. Back during the 1980’s I was sent to become a chaplain for Women in Early Recovery. The first day as I sat on the steps of a porch before my initial class, a young woman came over to me and said, “Hi, my name is Mary and I am HIV positive.” I hugged her telling her I loved her. She then mentioned someone told her there are three things you cannot be forgiven for; and since she had already done them, what sense was there for her to attend my classes on spirituality. My response was no one should have told her that and she was already forgiven. She became a positive assistant during the remaining recovery for her addiction. When she left the facility she spent her remaining time with friends in Latrobe, PA until she passed away from Full-blown Aids. I was sent to save Mary from eternal death.

So as we remember the souls who are already in heaven let each of us reflect we too were called by God to bring at least one soul who was in need of forgiveness and it was through our response to his call to bring the Good News of Christ to them.

What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe “because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.” So “that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit.” Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church’s growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability “are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all”; they are “motives of credibility “ which show that the assent to faith is “by no means a blind impulse of the mind.” (CCC 156).

The essence of Sainthood is this belief in what the Catechism tells us about our faith.

Ralph B. Hathaway