Saturday, 31 October 2009
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Homily for the Solemnity of All Saint's November 1, 2009
Today is the feast of All Saints, rooted in the tradition of heroes to follow; the Catholic Church has always remembered her martyrs, confessors, and saints. Our ultimate goal is sanctity how do we accomplish it? I would recommend three areas that we could all stand to grow in, prayer, service, and unity.
Prayer is our communication with God. There are four types of prayer, adoration, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Supplication is often where we stop. Our laundry list of needs, wants, and desires. We come before God with petitions for others for health and peace. We often have a list of our own as well. Supplication is an important part of prayer but it is not the only one. We should add to those many requests the request for forgiveness. A daily examination of conscience is one of the easiest ways to grow in the spiritual life. Recognizing our own fallen nature brings our minds to the glories of the one who never fell. We should thank God for the many blessings we have received. I would bet that if any of use sat down and took pen to paper we would find that our blessings vastly out weigh our needs. Finally, the most important is adoration. Adoration or contemplation is when we move past supplication, repentance, and thanksgiving and just sit in the presence of God. St. John Vianney the patron of parish priest tells this story, “The old man came in every day at the same time and left at the same time. He just sat there in the Church. I could tell he was in prayer, so I asked him, “What do you pray for.” He replied, “I sit here and gaze on Him. And He gazes on me.” Prayer is the act of getting caught in a gaze.
We each have a service to offer. It is easy to talk about all the hours we spend at the Church digging holes, or watering plants, or mowing the lawn, or taking communion to the home bound, or going to meetings. But service takes on many other forms. True Christian service is rooted in prayer and the baptismal call to holiness. Christian service is a response to the love we have already received and an invitation to receive love. If we are not brought back to the well of depth in Christ Jesus for refreshment after our service, then it can never be Christian service. If the service does not start at the fount of the Church and flow into the world, then it isn’t Christian service. Sometimes our Christian service is as simple as a phone call or a gentle laugh, other times it is as difficult as walking with someone as they die. Sr. Helen Prejean wrote, “God gave me a pen light. I could only see the obstacle directly in front of me. None of them looked that impressive or insurmountable. But as I look back with my pen light, I know that if God had given me a high beam flashlight I would never have begun the journey.” Service moves us outside of our selves.
Finally unity, our prayer and our service should point to one thing, Oneness in the Lord. When prayer and service bring us to division, then we can be assured that they are not from God. True Prayer and True Service can only be rooted in the salvific experience of Jesus Christ in our lives. This is an experience of unity, because we are all made in the image and likeness of God. Jesus final message in Matthew “Let them be one as you and I, Father, are one.”
We are all called to be saints. Let us respond to God’s gift of grace through prayer, service, and unity. Walking amidst the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before. Through the intercession of all the saints, known and unknown, may we grow closer to God and more like Jesus Christ.
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