{"id":1215,"date":"2013-11-01T15:27:26","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T19:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=1215"},"modified":"2013-11-01T15:27:26","modified_gmt":"2013-11-01T19:27:26","slug":"the-solemnity-of-all-saints-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/the-solemnity-of-all-saints-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Solemnity of All Saints"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today (November 1st) we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints<\/a>.\u00a0 There are many saints known by name.\u00a0 When I asked our parish school children to name some saints, half of their hands went up immediately.\u00a0 Saints are important to us.\u00a0 St. Francis, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Patrick, St. Elizabeth, St. Anne, and the soon to be canonized Blessed Pope John Paul II.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of saints officially recognized by the Catholic Church but there are countless more that we don’t know by name.\u00a0 All who are in Heaven are saints.\u00a0 So today we honor them all.<\/p>\n

Our belief in the saints as\u00a0Catholics is often misinterpreted by non-Catholics.\u00a0 We do not worship<\/em> the saints.\u00a0 God is the only one we worship.\u00a0 Following the commandment to worship only one God, we venerate\u00a0<\/em>the saints.\u00a0 To venerate the saints is to show honor and respect recognizing that they lived their lives in accordance with God’s Will and now enjoy the Kingdom of Heaven.<\/p>\n

In today’s first reading <\/a>, John tells us about his vision of Heaven.\u00a0 There are people of every nation and tongue.\u00a0 All are welcome in Heaven.\u00a0 All can be saints.\u00a0 All should want to be saints.<\/p>\n

What does it take to be a saint?\u00a0 In listening to the Beatitudes in today’s gospel, we hear Jesus say “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the\u00a0Kingdom of Heaven.\u00a0 <\/em>The saints are the ones who have been\u00a0received into the Kingdom of Heaven.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because they were ‘poor in spirit.’\u00a0 This doesn’t mean that their faith was weak.\u00a0 It may have been but what they did that is right is to recognize that they needed God’s help.\u00a0 They wanted to do good in God’s eyes.<\/p>\n

Jesus also tells us “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”<\/em>\u00a0 The saints sought to do good.\u00a0 We want to do good but we don’t always.\u00a0 We are not perfect and neither were the saints when they lived on Earth.\u00a0 We must strive to follow Jesus but in the end we realize it is not our own actions that make us worthy for Heaven.\u00a0 It is God who makes us worthy.<\/p>\n

In the struggle to live our faith, the saints serve as examples for us of what it means to be Christian.\u00a0 They also serve us as intercessors before God.\u00a0 When we ask saints for help, we are not asking the saint to do a miracle.\u00a0 Only God can make miracles happen.\u00a0 The saints pray for us before God.<\/p>\n

Thus, our veneration of the saints is not to try to please them so that they will do things for us.\u00a0 That would be like offering a bribe but what could we possibly bribe the saints with?\u00a0 They are with God.\u00a0 What could we give them that would be worth more than being with God?<\/p>\n

So today we honor the example of the saints and ask for their intercession before God that we might have the grace we need to follow Jesus.<\/p>\n

Peace,<\/p>\n

Fr. Jeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today (November 1st) we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints.\u00a0 There are many saints known by name.\u00a0 When I asked our parish school children to name some saints, half of their hands went up immediately.\u00a0 Saints are important to us.\u00a0 St. Francis, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Patrick, St. Elizabeth, St. Anne, and the …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘The Solemnity of All Saints’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-jB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1216,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions\/1216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}