Sunday – 31st Week in Ordinary Time – A – Solemnity of All Saints

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ peace be with you. Today we have the great joy of celebrating the solemnity of all saints. Imagine that every single person who walked the walk of faith gave their hearts to God and who are now perpetually in eternal bliss. in the happiness of paradise without end. And they are not just there doing nothing. they are there enjoying their eternity with God with one another, but they're also remembering us in their prayers.

In today's first reading, Saint John is very keen on pointing out that heaven is not reserved for a privileged few. In fact, he says he had a vision, and he had a vision, and I quote, “of a great multitude, which no one could count from every nation, race, people, and tongue” (Revelation 7:9).My brothers and sisters, the multitude reminds us that holiness is possible for people of every nation, culture, and circumstance of life. This is the extent of God's goodness. It is offered to all That is why the word Catholic meaning universal is applied to the institution that Christ founded on earth to gather, people from all over the world into one fold to worship him as he so desired, and the Father and the Holy Spirit. My brothers and sisters, the saints were not necessarily people who never struggled, or sinned even, but they were people who allowed Christ grace to purify and transform them, so that eventually they were able to let go of sin and cling to the eternal freedom. that the gift of grace imparted to them.

Their holiness is ultimately the fruit of the lamb's sacrifice, the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, and their robes in heaven were washed white, through the blood of the Lamb. In the second reading from the same Saint John, we hear that believers are already God's children, although the fullness of their destiny remains a hope, a hidden reality. that we are making our way towards. We are a people with vision. We have a destiny on our GPS. When christ appears, we will become like him and see him as he is a vision that the saints in heaven already possess.

But Saint John is making it clear that we have the opportunity offered to us by God to be his children now in the present so listen to his words in chapter three verse two. “Beloved, we are God's children now. what we shall be has not yet been revealed” (1 John 3:2). He's trying to say that holiness is not becoming someone entirely different, but allowing God to bring to completion what he has already begun in us through baptism. We are God's children now, but we are still growing into the fullness of that identity. In life's journey in this pilgrimage through this world, we begin to see more and more with each passage passing day, if we allow ourselves to be inundated with grace, by placing ourselves in God's presence in prayer, We begin to realize more and more how truly we are and we have always been, notwithstanding the sins, notwithstanding the imperfections of our past life, and the ones that may come. Because God's love will never end and will never change for us, we have always been, we will always remain his sons and his daughters. But he wants us to collaborate with him because he will never force even a son or a daughter to be in his house unless they truly want to be there like the prodigal son who said to his father, who really had everything, but he said to his father, give me my share of the estate now.

I want to leave. And the father said, Here you go. Is this what you want? The father will force nobody to stay home, and the father will force nobody to be in heaven, as much as he knows that it is our eternal good our greatest good, but he will never infringe upon our freedom because that would mean that he is lacking something, that he is lacking authority, that he is lacking power, that he is lacking in his love for us, and that can never be. In the gospel Jesus proclaims the beatitudes revealing the attitudes and dispositions of those who belong to God's kingdom. He calls blessed those whom the world often considers weak, unsuccessful, or unfortunate. .