A Carpe Diem Snapshot:
There I was, following my saint-in-the-making friend Ashley to the noon Mass on All Saints Day at St. Peter's Basilica, when all of a sudden, the Pope showed up at his library window! There was a special Angelus for today's feast that we were unaware of, but our timing was just perfect. We were only able to hear his opening remarks as we were en route to Mass but those words did catch my attention and so I looked them up just now.
"Today, Solemnity of All Saints, in the Gospel (cf. Mt 5:1-12), Jesus proclaims the identity card of the Christian. And what is the identity card of the Christian? The Beatitudes. It is our identity card, and also the way of holiness (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et exsultate, 63). Jesus shows us a path, that of love, which He Himself took first by making Himself man, and which for us is both a gift from God and our response. Gift and response.
It is a gift from God because, as Saint Paul says, it is He who sanctifies (cf. 1 Cor 6:11). And this is why the Lord is the first we ask to make us holy, to make our heart similar to His (cf. Encyclical Letter Dilexit nos, 168). With His grace, He heals us and frees us from all that prevents us from loving as He loves us (cf. Jn 13:34), so that in us, as Blessed Carlo Acutis used to say, there may always be 'less of me to make room for God'.
And this leads us to the second point: our response. The Father of heaven indeed offers us His holiness, but He does not impose it. He sows it in us, He makes us taste its flavour and see its beauty, but then He awaits our response. He leaves us the freedom of following His good inspirations, of letting ourselves be involved in His plans, of making His sentiments ours (cf. Dilexit nos, 179), putting ourselves, as He taught us, at the service of others, with an ever more universal charity, open and addressed to all, to the entire world.
We see all of this in the life of the saints, even in our time. Think, for example, of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, who in Auschwitz asked to take the place of a father of a family, condemned to death; or of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, who spent her existence in the service of the poorest of the poor; or of Bishop Saint Oscar Romero, murdered at the altar for having defended the rights of the last against the abuse of their oppressors. And in this way we can make a list of many saints, many of them: those we venerate on the altars and others, that I like to call the saints “next door”, the everyday ones, hidden, who go forward in their daily Christian life. Brothers and sisters, how much hidden saintliness there is in the Church! We recognize so many brothers and sisters formed by the Beatitudes: poor, meek, merciful, hungry and thirsty for justice, workers for peace. They are people “filled with God”, incapable of remaining indifferent to the needs of their neighbour; they are witnesses of shining paths, possible for us too.
Let us ask ourselves, now: do I ask God, in prayer, for the gift of a holy life? Do I let myself be guided by the good impulses that His Spirit inspires in me? And do I commit myself personally to practising the Beatitudes of the Gospel, in the environments in which I live?
May Mary, Queen of all Saints, help us to make our lives a path of holiness."
Liturgical: Solemnity of All Saints
Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure,
as he is pure.
Bishop Barron's Gospel reflections today.
The month of November's liturgical devotion is for the poor souls in purgatory.
Remember to pray for the Faithful Departed from November 1 to the 8th.
Sanctoral: Today is the Solemnity of All Saints. The Church celebrates all the saints: canonized or beatified, and the multitude of those who are in heaven enjoying the beatific vision that are only known to God. During the early centuries the Saints venerated by the Church were all martyrs. Later the pope set November 1 as the day for commemorating all the Saints. We all have this "universal call to holiness." What must we to do in order to join the company of the saints in heaven? We "must follow in His footsteps and conform [our]selves to His image seeking the will of the Father in all things. [We] must devote [our]selves with all [our] being to the glory of God and the service of [our] neighbor. In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in Church history" (Lumen Gentium, 40).
"This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity—this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed—is called "heaven." Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness" (CCC 1024).
Human: All about the Month of November 2024 from Old Farmer's Almanac here!
All Saints’ Day is observed in Latin America as part of the Day of the Dead celebrations. Relatives often visit the graves of their loved ones on this day bringing flowers, lights, and deceased’s favorite foods to the cemetery. In some countries, a common practice is to make or fry sweet dough, in the shape of donuts or braided strands or rolls.
These "intergenerational" picnics with ancestors at their graves goes back to ancient Roman customs, as I learned many years ago during a visit to the "scavi" beneath St. Peter's Basilica, which is built upon a necropolis.
Natural: November birthstone- topaz; November birth flower- chrysanthemum
Italian: Passeggino (pushchair / stroller)
Quote: "Let us not be confused by the talents and missions of other saints. Let us be the kind of saints we were created to be." --Mother Angelica
Comments