ALL SAINTS                                                

(Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12)

Today we are celebrating all the saints, all those, that is, who -- known and unknown -- are beloved of God and share in His eternal blessedness by a supremely fulfilling gift of God that can never be lost or taken away, for He is almighty and His will is eternal.  Let us now, therefore, look at those blessed ones we are celebrating and also look closely at the way Jesus traces out for all who would share with them in like blessedness. 

You heard in that first reading something of the glory of heaven:

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, crying out with a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!"

No racism, no sexism, no privileged groups there, but people from all nations and all times; all of them standing as one before the throne of God with the Lamb their Lord and Saviour, and praising God for the victory He has won for them:

Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honour and power and might, be to our God forever and ever.  Amen.

It is there, People of God, we, as disciples of Jesus, aspire to go when this, our earthly pilgrimage, is ended.  Don’t think: “I can’t imagine me enjoying an eternity of nothing else but that”, for the only way to appreciate something of heavenly joy is to recall some special moment when you felt yourself both supremely delighted and uplifted: how time then passed by unnoticed and so, so, quickly, as you later realized!  Now the happiness, the blessedness of Heaven is something of that nature: totally overwhelming, uplifting and ecstatic joy that obliterates time!   Such recollections should help you realise that in heaven there can be no such thing as weariness or boredom, for heavenly joy and blessedness is an eternal instant of total ecstasy which has its origin in the vision of the infinite beauty, goodness and glory, of God Himself.

That blessedness, moreover, is not exclusively reserved for heaven; for those who come to some appreciation of the beauty of God’s truth and awareness of His goodness to all who believe in the name of Jesus, can begin to experience something of that blessedness even here on earth, as St. John tells us:

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.  Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

We who believe in the only Son of God who died for our sins and rose again, we who hope in the promises of Him Who is now seated at the right hand of power, are thereby being purified as He is pure, and being blessed with a beginning of the eternal blessedness which is His.  And as, through prayer and faithfulness in the way of Jesus, we deepen our hope, we come to appreciate -- and perhaps even, at times, imagine we experience -- something of that heavenly joy so intimately bound up with the gift and treasure which is our faith.

If, then, you would grow in that foretaste of beatitude, if you would know more of the heavenly joy to which we are all called as Christians, turn your attention now with me to the Gospel and try to understand better the way through life Jesus has marked out for His disciples.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, Blessed are those who mourn, Blessed are the meek, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, Blessed are the merciful, Blessed are the pure in heart, Blessed are the peacemakers, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.

There we have the virtues of the one hundred and forty-four thousand sealed out of all the tribes of Israel as mentioned in the first reading, a wonderful compendium of what is best in the Old Testament: the truest fruits of the Law, the inspirations of prophets, and the meditations of sages; all, indeed, finding expression in the ecstasies of the Psalmists, and leading up to and preparing for that which would be the fulfilment and crown of all that had gone before.  As Jesus said (Matt 5:17):

I did not come to destroy the Law or the Prophets but to fulfil them.

Now, however, since with Jesus the time of fulfilment has indeed come, instead of simply recalling the disciplines of the Law and the experiences of the prophets, which had gradually prepared a people for the Lord over the course of Old Testament times, Jesus goes one immeasurable step further: revealing Himself as God in flesh and the supreme glory of the disciples standing around Him:

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.

It is as if He was saying: such, indeed, were the virtues of the OT, but now, for you who are my disciples, your true title to heavenly glory is that you are My disciples.  It is no longer enough to say that you are among the gentle, the poor in spirit, the merciful, for you who listen to Me and who follow Me, are all of that and more: you are My true disciples and that will be your sovereign passport for heaven and title to glory.

Yes, People of God, I am sure that you will appreciate that, in heaven, before the God of glory, it is not possible that the meekness, the gentleness, of any of the blessed could be admirable before the God of all holiness.  He is pleased to see such virtues of gentleness, humility, patience, mercifulness, or whatever, but being Himself all-holy, He therefore, most necessarily, sees also the limitations of our virtues, and He loves them best as anticipations of Jesus’ grace, preparations for Him.  However, the fact that someone has personally recognized His incarnate Word in Jesus, that someone has loved and served -- in Jesus -- His beloved and only-begotten Son Personally, that does indeed evoke the Father’s love, for to love His Son supremely here on earth is the summit and culmination of all virtue, including and surpassing all that has gone before, in His eyes.   You who are parents will understand.

Perhaps we can picture it best if we think of a sculptor.  God chose His material, the People of God, the nation of Israel, and through the Law and the Prophets He formed -- as does a sculptor with his chisel -- this block ('stiff-necked people' the prophets called them) gradually into some likeness of the Christ who was to come.  This work, however, was always done from the outside, so to speak, just as the chisel of the artist always chips away from the outside.  When Jesus the Christ -- the Son of God made flesh -- came, however, He gave His divine word to His disciples, to take root in their mind and heart and His example to inspire them.  He finally gave His human life for them, and then, having risen from the dead in the power of the Spirit of God, He ascended to the right hand of His Father, from where He sent His own most Holy Spirit to be with His disciples, making them into one Body, His Body, His Church.  The Holy Spirit was given to remain with His Church, guiding her into all truth and protecting her from the snares of the enemy, and in that continuing task the Spirit works from the inside, in the minds and hearts of the disciples, constantly forming them into a living likeness of Christ, their Lord and Saviour, for the Father:

Among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (Matt 11:11)

On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood, crying out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.  But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.  (Jn.7:37s.)

People of God, the glory of our calling, and, indeed, the joy of all the blessed in heaven lies in the fact that, as living members and living likenesses (not plaster-cast copies) of the Son, we are destined to share in His glory, and rejoice in the Father’s love:

You are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God -- and righteousness and sanctification and redemption -- that, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the Lord."  (1 Cor. 1:30-31)

In our first reading we heard questions being asked about the blessed in heaven:

Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?

In answer to the first question "who are these arrayed in white robes?" we can recall that we heard St. John tell us:

Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He (Jesus) is pure.

So we know now why the blessed are dressed in white robes: they are disciples who,  in Jesus and by His Spirit, have purified themselves as He is pure.

But what about that second question, "where did these people come from?"  Here we must bear in mind what Jesus has already told us:

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.  Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

That is where those dressed in white have come from; as the elder in heaven said:

These are the ones come out of the great tribulation who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Today we have great reason to celebrate: as disciples of Jesus we have already been given a share in heavenly life and blessedness, and we can experience some measure of that blessedness if we purify ourselves, as St. John told us, by trying to walk ever more faithfully in the way of Jesus, and to appreciate ever more deeply the beauty of His truth.  The final washing of our robes, however, will only be brought about through suffering with and for Jesus, as indeed so many of our Catholic and Christian brethren throughout the world are now suffering , as God wills for each and every one of us in our life.

Even here -- such is the blessedness already given us -- we can, in some degree, come to rejoice in our sufferings for Jesus as the apostle Paul assures us:

Just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.  (2 Corinthians 1:5; Romans 8:18)

30^th. Sunday, Year (C)

(Ecclesiasticus 35:12-14, 16-19; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14)

Jesus spoke this parable, we are told, to some who were:

Convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.

The evangelist, St. Luke, might be attacking the Pharisees whose public behaviour  manifested an excessive self-confidence which led them to look down on others; he might also be thought to imply that they wanted to show themselves righteous before men.  Jesus, however, spoke this parable not to attack but to offer healing, and for such healing to be effectively received it was necessary for the wrong to be recognized and for the medication be rightly applied.   Moreover, Jesus would seem to have addressed the parable to Pharisees who were, indeed, wanting to be righteous before God, because the whole point of the parable is show that they are not actually achieving what they wanted:

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified (that is accepted by, acceptable to, God) rather than the other.

Jesus, Who was recognized as a Rabbi, that is, a teacher, was saying, in other words, if you want to be acceptable to, righteous before, God, you are going about it the wrong way; look at the tax-collector, and learn this from me:

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

So where was the Pharisee in the parable getting things wrong? 

God I thank You that I am not like other men -- greedy, dishonest, adulterers.

No doubt some of his contemporaries were well-known money lovers, unjust (pseudo-religious) people, and, indeed, adulterers; others, perhaps even a notable proportion of them, may, at times, have been guilty of such behaviour … and what a picture that would be of Jewish religious society in those days! … yet he could in no way claim that all his contemporaries were like that.  If he had simply said ‘that I am not like some other men’, or even perhaps ‘many other men’ he might have been speaking truly.

As regards the tax collector, he would not have been found in the circle of acquaintances of a strict Pharisee, and he would indeed have been reckoned among the greedy extortioners (exacting excessive taxes) and the unjust (knowing and caring nothing of the Law) by most Jews of those days, let alone by a Pharisee.  However, this particular tax-collector was behaving in a most unusual way: he was openly and, most humbly, praying in the Temple: in that regard, although his dress bespoke a tax-collector, his actions were those of a religious man.  Our Pharisee, however, saw nothing other than the clothes of one he despised.

Now, that would seem to have been a characteristic trait of the Pharisees in general at that time: regarding all others with potential disdain, especially tax-collectors, extortioners, adulterers, and all those unjust before the Law!

It is really quite amazing to think that serious and sincerely religious men could have such a blanket attitude!  What was at the back of it all?  Well, Jesus would seem to be emphasizing, highlighting, in order to bring into the open, an attitude that was, to a large extent, endemic in the Pharisaic observance of the Law:

I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.

Notice, our Pharisee does not directly thank God for his virtuous practices: he thanks God that he is not like others whom he disdains; and then he proclaims his virtues as his own.   He sees sinners, directly, as offenders against God, and also against his own religious sentiments; his personal virtues do not, however, directly, cause him to raise his mind and heart in gratitude to God.

This pharisaic (sic!) tendency presents a perennial danger, People of God, for committed individuals of all persuasions; indeed, in early Christianity, we find St. Paul seeking to root it out when it began to show its head in the Corinthian church he had founded:

Who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive?  If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? (1 Cor. 4:7)

God’s gifts are given, generally speaking, to be used to further God’s purposes in the world around.  They are also given to draw the recipient closer to God: for gratitude felt should be expressed to God, personally; and, in that way, should lead to closer personal relationship with God, to a deeper appreciation of, and responsiveness to, Him.

When, however, religious practice becomes merely the external observance of certain precepts and ordinances rather than a personal commitment and response to God known and loved, then, gifts received can be ungratefully appropriated and used to exalt the recipient’s pride and superiority over others, instead of establishing his humility and bolstering his gratitude to God.  Moreover, when religion thus becomes cold and impersonal, deeds, even good deeds become worthless before God, being done not out of love for Him, the all Holy One, but as claims to personal holiness, further additions to a sum total of personal achievement and pride.

That was the state of the Pharisee in Our Lord’s parable: and nothing could better recall him to true religion than the sight of a repentant tax-collector near by, and dead to all but God in the Temple.

For, there is only one sure proof of holiness: love for Jesus, and in Him, for the Father, by the Spirit.  Holiness is not, in its essence, proven by miracles performed, nor by good deeds done, prayers said, pilgrimages made, money given, or indulgences gained; and of course, worldly reputation, the approval of authorities, or popularity among peers, have no true relevance here.  All of these can indeed, under the right conditions, be indications of some measure of holiness; but love alone is the authentic and certain criterion of that God-given holiness which is charity.

This teaching is sublimely expressed by St. Paul, again writing to his church community in Corinth:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.  And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-4)

Let us now listen to Our Lord answering the question once put to Him in the Gospel by a Scribe of pharisaic persuasion:

“Which is the first commandment of all?"  Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is:  Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the Lord is one.  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.'  This is the first commandment.  And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.'  There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-33)

And let us turn back to our readings for today and see how St. Paul himself manifested that very spirit so badly distorted by the Pharisee in the Gospel parable:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.

At that point one might think that Paul was dangerously close to being like the Pharisee counting up personal items of merit.  But notice how he continues, for Paul was not one to think his righteousness to be his own, personal, achievement; nor that he was alone among men in his endeavours and in his success:

…. There is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have longed for His appearance.

Finally, hear and admire his total humility and childlike trust before God when, fully aware of his imminent execution, he refers to his life’s achievements as having been done in him and through him by God (2Tim. 4:17-18):                                                               

The Lord stood by me and lent me strength, so that I might be His instrument in making the full proclamation of the gospel for the whole pagan world to hear; and thus I was rescued from the lion’s jaws.  The Lord will rescue me from every attempt to do me harm, and bring me safely into  His heavenly kingdom.  Glory to Him for ever and ever!  Amen.