All Saints

All Saints Day celebrates what we have traditionally called the “Church Triumphant”. This is the part of the Church that is experiencing their eternal reward right now, participating in the life of the Trinity free of the temptations and struggles of this world.

The Church Triumphant give us all hope here on earth. St. John’s First Letter helps us to see that this is where we are all called.

See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are.
[…]
when [what we shall be] is revealed we shall be like him…
1 John 3:1-3

When we pass from this life into the next phase of our life, we will meet God face-to-face. At that point, we will see our lives and we will see if we have turned back to the Father. We will see if, at the moment of our death, we were striving to love him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. For those of us who have fought against sin, who have repented and have worked to turn back to God, who have sought to love God above all things, we will be able to find peace in the place God has prepared for us. If we have not done these things, we will be condemned to the place we have prepared for ourselves that is full of sin, loneliness, and pain.

This constant battle against evil and sin is not one we fight alone. St. John teaches us in the book of Revelation[Apocalypse]: “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.” (Rev 7:10) St. John also sees fits to tell us what will be happening in Heaven: “They[The saints and angels standing before throne] prostrated themselves before the throne, worshiped God.” (Rev 7:11)

St. John teaches us that salvation comes from God and we are to bring ourselves before him in worship on his Heavenly throne. This clarifies how we must fight for holiness in our lives. We must unite ourselves to the one who brings salvation so that he might lift us up to the heights of Heaven. To do this, we join those saints in Heaven in worship of him. The great news for us Catholics is that this is what we do every time we are at Mass. We do not genuflect to the tabernacle when we enter our pews because some symbolic presence of God is in there: God is truly present and with us. We do not kneel during the Eucharistic Prayer because we a merely recounting the story of the last supper: we kneel because we are honoring God himself, who during Mass comes down from Heaven and gives himself to us. We do not prepare ourselves for receiving the Eucharist through fasting from food and through confession of all known mortal sin because it is partially God or bread the God has blessed or it is a symbol of God: we do so because we are receiving God himself into our bodies, and we must prepare a fitting place for him. But this is just the beginning.

In the Gospel today, we hear the Beatitudes. These are the blueprint for Heavenly life. This is how we will live in Heaven. If we desire to join God in Heaven, it is in our best interests to start living them now.

Today, we celebrate the triumph of the Saints in Heaven. May this celebration of their glory strengthen us and motivate us as we strive to join them in Heaven.