A Homily for the Solemnity of All Saints

Readings: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14 1 John 3:1-3 Matthew 5:1-12a

Francis is the funniest person I have ever known. I met him 38 years ago at Casa Santa Maria, the graduate house of the Pontifical North American College, where U.S. diocesan student priests live while they pursue graduate degrees at any of the 22 ecclesiastical universities and institutes of higher learning in the city of Rome. 

Three years ordained, I was delighted to be back in Rome to study fundamental theology. Francis had come out of Immaculate Conception in Huntington, N.Y., at that time the major seminary for Brooklyn and Rockville Center. He had been sent to Rome to obtain a doctorate in canon law. Francis loved the novels of P.G. Woodhouse and Anthony Trollope and doing The New York Times crossword puzzle. In seminary, he wrote and directed musical comedies about the saints. He did not warm to the study of church law in Latin at the Jesuit’s Pontifical Gregorian University.

I was first mesmerized by Francis’ vivacity in table conversation. He alternated between incisive wit and goofiness, almost always looking deliberately ridiculous in photos. On a prolonged spring break, we traveled with a third classmate through England on something like $25 a day. It was either laugh or cry on that budget!

Francis and I remained good friends after our brief time together in Rome. I would be sent back one more time for studies, and I always broke the flights to the Eternal City with a stopover on Long Island. When I went to teach in New York City, his Long Island rectories became weekend getaways for me. I spent a lot of time with his large extended family on holidays. 

Returning to parish life, I would call Francis whenever I had a canonical question, and, after my mother died, he took on the role of offering immediate sympathy and support for whatever might have gone wrong that week. And Francis was one of my very few friends who ever made the trip to Kansas. He visited during a week when I was scheduled to work an Engaged Encounter. So, he came along. One of those couples, from some three decades ago, annually sent Francis a Christmas letter with photos of their kids. 

This past February, a mutual friend, who does not regularly call, telephoned me in the middle of the day. “Ter, it’s bad. I’m sorry to break it to you this way. Francis is gone. When he didn’t show up for Mass this morning, they found him dead in the rectory.”

I returned to Long Island for the funeral. It hurt more than those of my parents, especially grieving with his family. His death at age 69 was so unexpected. And of course, family is given to us. We choose the friends whom we will love. 

The Solemnity of All the Saints is about the many saints whom we have known during our lives, those who are not listed in the canonical roster of the church. It also recalls some of the most salient teachings of the church concerning the life to come. 

I frequently spend time now in prayer with Francis, just as I do with my parents. When we speak of the Communion of the Saints, we mean that our lives with them do not end in death. Why should they? The saints do not become any less human than they were in life. Indeed, they become more human because their awareness of life has been lifted into that of the Lord. They see, they know, what he knows. 

Until the reformations of the 16th century, to speak of the saints as being asleep in the Lord, or resting in him, meant that their trials and labors were over, not that they had lost what little consciousness they had in life until the return of the Lord at the end of history. When St. John the Seer is given a glimpse of heaven, he does not find the saints asleep. No, they are in the heavenly liturgy, extolling the Lord who rules over the cosmos.

They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,
wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.
They cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne,
and from the Lamb” (Rev 7:10).

Granted, we cannot see them. We cannot hear them, but they both see and hear us, and, in my experience, they find so many ways of letting us know that. Theirs is a consciousness raised to a higher plane, but, like their Lord, they do not forget or forsake those whom they loved on earth.

I often find myself not only being with Francis in prayer but asking things of him. It is important to question why I do that and why so many others do the same with their deceased loved ones. 

Without much reflection, I often feel that only Francis really understands what I am going through. He is the only one “up there” who knows me. The same pattern repeats with my parents. But of course, none of the saints can know us more, or love us better, than God himself. So, why do we instinctively turn to them? 

The old argument about Catholics and Orthodox Christians creating minor gods is quite flaccid. There is only one power, one authority, in heaven and on earth. The Son and the Spirit surrender their wills to the Father. They do his work. The same is true of all the saints. No one in heaven goes into the presence of God the Father and says, “I’d like you to reconsider.” Though if God responds to our prayers on earth, why would he not respond to those who dwell with him in heaven?

Francis never knew a stranger. He could charm anyone, but I do not turn to him for his powers of persuasion. I look to him because his is a face of God that I have come to know and love. The saints enter, become one with the Cosmic Christ. He writes their stories, and his love and mercy play out on their faces. I love the way my friend, St. Catherine of Sienna, puts this. Their humanity has been absorbed and is “filled to bursting in the humanity of the Word” (The Dialogue, 62).

Why would any of us deny ourselves the comfort of seeking out the Christ who came to us in his saints while they shared our lives with us? If your mother or the Virgin Mary revealed to you the feminine visage of God, which all of us desperately need, why not turn to them? They are not anti-Christs. They now live and act “in persona Christi” in the person of Christ. 

See what love the Father has bestowed on us
that we may be called the children of God (1 Jn 3:1).

The youngest doctor of the church, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, wrote of encountering her mother, who died when the saint was a toddler, on her first holy Communion. As she put it, she received both her Lord and her mother, who had become such an integral part of him.

Wasn’t Heaven itself in my soul, and hadn’t Mamma taken her place there a long time ago? Thus, in receiving Jesus’ visit, I received Mamma’s. She blessed me and rejoiced in my happiness (Story of a Soul, IV).

Yes, for a while yet, my communion with Francis is limited by my consciousness, but even that grows each time I return to prayer. And if God’s graces bear fruit, perhaps, come the end, I will barely notice when my consciousness of Christ, of Francis, of my parents and of all the saints slips over to the other side.