NewCreation

Homily for Solemnity of All Saints

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the Solemnity of All Saints. And this is a wonderful feast for us to celebrate praying eucharistically, because whereas every time we pray eucharistically we are making ourselves present to the great rejoicing that is in heaven just there, and make ourselves aware of how that great rejoicing is trying to reach out to us and envelop us. Today we celebrate that even more richly, because we remember all the brothers and sisters from generations past and present who are already taking part in that great rejoicing and reaching out to us to help us be enveloped, if you like, in that great rejoicing. So it's an even richer sharing in the presence today than normally. Before I look at the Gospel text, I'd like to just point out how the two readings which lead up to it, which are so beautifully chosen to fit in with the feast, give us a really key hint to how to read this particular text from Saint Matthew. The first is from the book of the Apocalypse. We get the vision of those around the throne of the Lamb standing as one slain. First of all, the witnesses from the people of Israel, and then a crowd far greater than can possibly be counted throughout the whole world, out of every tribe, nation, tongue, language, etc. In other words, it's really universal — this is something that is true about being human. And then the question of who are these, and the response from the elder: "They are these who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Something about the presence of us in heaven is as of people who have come through a great ordeal, have been ground through the mill, been taken through the wringer, if you like. That's how great rejoicing comes into our lives — through this process. And in the epistle from Saint John as well, we become aware of how it's a process starting from where we are. But we don't know who we are to become. We know that as we are taken into purity of heart we will find ourselves like Christ — again going through a process, not an easy process, but the process authentic, one that brings us into being. Okay. Having started with that, having started with washing our clothes, if you like, in the blood of the Lamb, let's look at the Lamb speaking these things in the Sermon on the Mount. First of all, Matthew is of course extremely savvy. He has Jesus go up a hill. Moses went up a hill, but Moses went up a hill to talk to God, and so that God would remain hidden from the people. Jesus goes up a hill and obviously he turns around and sits down and speaks. And interestingly, the Greek doesn't say he began to speak, as our translation does. The Greek says, "And he opened his mouth and taught them." Opening his mouth, he taught them — in other words, they could see his face. That's already a comment on the difference between the Mosaic teaching, a difference which he'll continue when he says later on, "You have heard it said, but I say to you." Here is the face that can be seen. Not like in Deuteronomy, where we were told, "You heard the voice, but you did not see the form, you did not see the visage." Here they are seeing the face, and the face is speaking to them, not from above in some distant hidden place, but as a teacher at their level, very slightly raised so as to be able to be heard, for purely practical reasons. So the really interesting thing about this, I want to suggest, is that he is not dictating norms. He is describing a process of insiderness. He is speaking from inside, showing the kind of insiderness that he is opening up and inviting us to discover ourselves inside. I bring this up because it raises questions about the words which we tend to translate either "happy" or "blessed." We don't have much other choice in English for translating these words. And yet if you say "happy are the poor in heart" or "happy are the meek," it seems to suggest for most of us a kind of an emotional state. And of course most of those who mourn aren't, as it happens, happy. Those of us who are undergoing persecution aren't actually happy while that's going on. If you say "blessed," it sounds as though it's a pious wish about something very much in the sky — a pie in the sky, some kind of "oh yes, it's very blessed to do those things." I'd like to suggest to you a different word — a word which is not at all, I should say, an attempt to offer an alternative translation. This is definitely a paraphrase, but it's a word which combines happiness without making that an emotional state, and blessedness without making that a distant title. And that's the word "radiant." Radiant are the poor in spirit, or the poor in heart. Radiant are the meek. Radiant. To translate that, it's worthwhile going through the list yourselves. Try the word "radiant." Why? Because the suggestion precisely is that our Lord is talking about the sort of radiance that is the process of working through these things. And let's remember that each of these Beatitudes is a sign of a particular sort of precariousness. It's one element of going through the grind. And actually it can be quite shocking. Radiant are those who have opted for poverty because they are making God their king. Whoa! This is absolutely coherent with Matthew's Jesus, who teaches very drastically that you cannot serve two gods, you cannot serve both God and Mammon, and that part of the hard-acquired radiance comes with working through our attachment to any form of riches and so discovering what it is like to have God rather than Mammon as our king. This is painful stuff. Anyone who is learning how to be generous and not attached to goods knows how strong the kingship of Mammon is in our lives. And the hard-acquired radiance of moving beyond that — hard-acquired radiance in each of the cases — is likewise for those who mourn. There's nothing happy about mourning. It's loss. It's loss of world, it's loss of friends, it's loss of relatives, loss of health. There's nothing apparently blessed about that. But learning to be able to let go, and trusting that you are being given to be who you are and that all is not lost, gives the form of radiance. "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." The meek is the wuss. And yet that is what those who refuse vengeance, refuse rivalry, refuse power look like. And yet it's in refusing those things that we actually find ourselves being given this. We become radiant on the way. There's the radiance. You can go through each one of these for yourselves. I think you'll discover you know what I mean. Radiance is to be found in the process of transfiguring every human pattern of desire from a position of precariousness into a sign of glory, a sign of being possessed by God's visibility. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." This is the central one of the Beatitudes. That's the process. Pure of heart is not the purity of saving yourself from impure things; it's acquiring, in the midst of the mill, the midst of the wringer, a singleness of heart that is able to see God. That's "look towards God and be radiant." This is not looking towards God in the sanctuary of the Temple; this is as you go through the wringer and find yourself given singleness of heart, so you see God. Let me make a suggestion here about making this personal. Part of the joy of this feast is taking a little time to stop and think — not of the canonized saints we may have known in our lifetimes, which will inevitably be few, but of the signs that we're aware that there is much sanctity around us. That there have been glimpses of this hard-won radiance in our lives, in other people we've met and who have gone, as we say, to their reward. And that we were aware that something shocking by comparison with the order of this world was already radiant in them. We remember with joy and with gratitude those people, and ask that those signs be multiplied in your lives. I'll share with you a couple of mine that I will be rejoicing with over these days. I remember when I was a young priest in a very, very poor parish in Brazil. There was a lady who was a devout parishioner, a very, very poor lady, who lived in very, very modest circumstances as regards the building, clothing, and food. And yet she had a love for what she called "the poor," meaning people poorer than herself. She was convinced that she was rich, and that her vocation required her to find things for the poor. These are things that make you want to fall down and worship, because it's a sign of something impossible. Or of another friend: a real rogue person with a criminal past — male prostitute, thief, thug — once sitting in the house, or hovel, of him and his boyfriend. I sat on what I thought was a wrinkle on the bed, but it was in fact a revolver hidden under the blanket. A person who I'd met first in the hospital when he was recovering from a particular bout with AIDS, of which he eventually died. But as AIDS developed, and as it became clear that many people working in the hospitals were not even brave enough to go and attend to the cadavers in the morgue, he suddenly showed up in the hospital morgue to wash the corpses and prepare them for burial — purely gratuitously, without a second thought for himself, his health. Faced with that, I stopped and thought: here is something radiant, here is something more than could possibly be expected. These are the gifts of the saints, which are being poured out to encourage, to help, to nourish us on our way. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.