“Beloved, we are God’s children now.”
How incredible is this! Our all powerful Creator, our all knowing Father, our loving Savior, the God who dwells in us and sends his Holy Spirit among us calls each of us his children.
“What we shall be has not yet been revealed.”
God has incredible plans for each of us. We do not know what they are for us as individuals, but we do know some things. In St. John’s Apocalypse/Revelation, we learn that we will worship God at the Altar of the Lamb with all those martyrs, confessors of the faith, and prophets. We are called to join this heavenly choir of All Saints. Today, we celebrate their triumph over Satan, slavery to Sin, and everlasting Death. We also, seeing their example, hopefully grow in our desire to be in their number.
Sacred Scripture—all of it, but especially the Gospels—and the Traditions of our Catholic Church are the guidebook to this eternal glory. God, who lives with us and within us, has done everything to guide us and help us return to him. The Beatitudes we hear today are one of many summaries of this Good News and God’s command. His greatest command—to love Him with our whole heart, soul, and mind—is lived out in His second: to love neighbor as yourself. God isn’t asking, he’s instructing us. If we do not love our neighbor then we make a farce of our love for God, because he does love our neighbor.
I return to the Beatitudes. If we desire to see God, to be called his children, and to be given the great rewards of Heaven, we must be clean of heart, peacemakers, and fearless in the face of those who hate us.
This is the road to Heaven, the road to join All the Saints in Heaven. When we join them, our glory will be revealed, and “we shall be like [God], for we shall see him as he is.”