All Saints

Picture a church so full that the crowd spills out the doors, and everyone inside is smiling. That is what today’s feast is: the one day a year the Church throws a party for every single person who ever made it to Heaven.

Some of them we know by name. St. Peter and St. Paul, who died in Rome. St. Patrick, who went back to the island where he had been a slave. St. Joan of Arc, a teenage girl who led an army. St. Josephine Bakhita, sold as a slave in Sudan, who became a nun in Italy. St. Gianna Molla, a doctor and mother. St. Pancras and St. Agnes, kids about your kids’ age, who died rather than deny Jesus.

But for every saint with a feast day there are countless others with no page in any book: grandmothers, farmers, soldiers, babies, people who did ordinary work well and loved God more than anything. That is why the Church keeps one day for all of them.

The feast is old. In 609, the Pantheon in Rome, once a temple to every pagan god, was rededicated to Mary and all the martyrs. Around 835, Pope Gregory IV asked that the whole West keep November 1 for all the saints. This year it falls on a Sunday, so the Sunday Mass is the feast.

What do all the saints have in common? Not their jobs, their countries, or their ages. Just this: they loved God more than anything else, and they let Him finish the work. They are our friends now, and they are waiting for us.

All you holy men and women, saints of God, pray for us!

In the countryside of Italy, St. Francis of Assisi would cry out, “Love is not loved!” lamenting that so few people loved God. The famous prayer called “The Prayer of St. Francis” (though it likely was not written by him, as it first appeared in 1912 in a small French spiritual magazine called La Clochette) also has a line that speaks to this truth. It asks God for the grace not to seek so much “to be loved, as to love.” Francis of Assisi was a man of humility, whose entire life was devoted to making God loved. He renounced everything, even his own earthly father and his inheritance, for his Heavenly Father’s love. He took to heart the admonition of St. John: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). Francis did not set his heart on this passing world or seek to be loved by the world; rather, he wanted the world to love God. He was a mere compass pointing to the true north, Christ Himself.

If there is one saint who sought to live the gospel perfectly by imitating Christ in every way — poverty, humility, obedience, charity, and suffering — it was St. Francis. His biographer, the Franciscan friar St. Bonaventure, who was just four years old when Francis died, wrote about his holy founder: “The man of God was filled to overflowing with humility."

St. Bonaventure tells a story that testifies to Francis’s humility. One day, one of the friars was praying in a church alongside Francis, and he had a vision. He saw many thrones in Heaven, but one shone brighter than the rest with precious stones. He wondered whose throne this could be. Then the holy friar heard a voice: “This was the throne of one of the fallen angels, and now it is reserved for the humble Francis.” Later recalling the vision, the friar asked St. Francis about it. Francis replied, “I think myself to be the greatest of sinners.” He further declared, “If Christ had shown to the most wicked man on earth such mercy as He has shown to me, I believe assuredly that that man would have been far more grateful to God than I have been.” Because of Francis’s testimony, the friar came to believe in the vision, especially the truth of Jesus’ words that the humble shall be exalted.

Humility is truth. Francis showed by his actions that he really believed he was the least of all. Many pitied him and even thought he was mad, for humility appears like madness to the world. As St. Paul declared, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27). Francis was not insane; he was only following the gospel — literally. Yet in the world’s eyes, Francis was a failure. He did not have children, land, money, or titles. But in God’s eyes, he was one of the greatest saints, because he knew the truth about himself: He was a loved sinner, who sought to love God and neighbor above everything.

Do the saints hear our prayers? Our Catechism states clearly that the saints who precede us into heaven serve as “a cloud of witnesses.” Further, “they contemplate God, praise him and constantly care for those whom they have left on earth” (2683). In the parable of the talents, Jesus told us that God’s faithful servants will be placed in charge over much when they enter into the joy of the Master (Matt. 25:21, 23). The prayers they offer up for us are part of their exalted service, and we should pray to them “to intercede for us and for the whole world” (CCC 2683). Of course, as we saw in chapter 2, separated souls lack bodily senses (to be restored at the Last Judgment). The saints have no ears, so how do they hear our prayers? Thomas explains that the saints in heaven see the divine essence, which is sufficient for knowing all things necessary. God, by beholding His own essence, knows all there is. No creature, including the saints and the highest angels, can completely comprehend God’s essence and thereby know everything, but each of the blessed does see in God’s essence “as many other things as the perfection of his happiness requires.” Part of the saints’ service to God is helping us attain our salvation, “for thus they become God’s co-operators, ‘than which nothing is more Godlike,’ as Dionysius declares.” Hence, they know not through senses, but through the Word of God, “the vows, devotions, and prayers of those who have recourse to their assistance.” Thomas also notes that while the saints know the woes and sufferings of their loved ones on earth, this does not produce grief in the saints, because they are so full of heavenly joy that they can know no sorrow whatsoever.