But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself inflamed by a tremendous yearning"

Homily for All Saints
Today we celebrate the great Solemnity of All Saints. The liturgy today invites us to "Rejoice in the Lord" and so share with heart and mind, in the heavenly jubilation of the Saints. Here at Holy Mass our communion with the saints is intensified, and we can begin to taste their joy.
As I was preparing for this great feast, I came across the Holy Father’s homily for all saints a few years ago. In his homily, Benedict reminds us that, "the Saints are not a small caste of chosen souls but an innumerable crowd to which the liturgy urges us to raise our eyes. This multitude of souls not only includes the officially recognized Saints, but the baptized of every age and nation who sought to carry out the divine will of God faithfully and lovingly. While we are unacquainted with the faces and even the names of many of them, with the eyes of faith we see the countless others that shine in God's firmament like glorious stars.
Often we can think that the crowd of saints is made of up of only those saints that the Church has officially canonized, but on this feast we actually celebrate all the souls that have enter into the full vision of God, hence all saints day.
And so today, the Church is celebrating her dignity as "Mother of the Saints and as image of the Eternal City." Today she displays her great beauty as the immaculate Bride of Christ, source and model of all holiness.
Yes, the Church certainly doesn’t lack contentious or even rebellious children, but it is in her Saints that she recognizes her characteristic features and precisely in them savours her deepest joy. In other words, the true Church reveals herself, not by her rebellious unfaithful, disobedient children, but by her faithful obedient members. What other church has produced saints which shine with the light of God’s holiness such as Jerome, Augustine, Aquinas, Anthony of Padua, Francis, St. Theresa of Avila, Therese of Lisuex, Padre Pio, or Mother Theresa of Calcutta
In our first reading, the author of the Book of Revelation describes all the saints as "a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues" (Rv 7: 9). Included in this great multitude are the Saints of the Old Testament, starting with the righteous Abel and the faithful Patriarch, Abraham our Father in faith, those saints of the New Testament, the numerous early Christian Martyrs and the Blesseds and Saints of later centuries, all the way to the witnesses of Christ in this modern age of ours—the age of martyrs. (Why is our age the age of martyrs? Well, if you count the number of martyrs for the faith from St. Stephen to 1900; and then, count the number of martyrs from 1900 until today, the latter would be much, much larger: by far. More are dying for the faith, the Catholic faith today than ever; and that number looks to explode in a very short time.
Speaking of the Martyrs, Benedict points out that, many of the martyrs were ordinary people who had the courage to give their lives for the Gospel. Benedict also reminded us, that martyrdom for all believers is always a distinct possibility. True friends of God are united in the common desire to preach the truth of the Gospel by their very lives. By the impulse of the Holy Spirit they long to incarnate the Gospel, which means by the witness of their lives, they long to become the living Gospel for all men to see and hear. We should all long to be martyrs; that is if we really love God. In fact, every time Jesus says witness in the Gospel, the word He uses in the original Greek is the same word for Martyr. Jesus calls us to live a Martyrs life, even if we are not called to a martyrs death.
In his homily Benedict asks, "why should our praise and glorification, or even the celebration of this Solemnity, mean anything to the Saints?" He answers by quoting a famous All Saints Day homily by St. Bernard in which Bernard says, "The Saints have no need of honour from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs.... But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself inflamed by a tremendous yearning" (Disc. 2, Opera Omnia Cisterc. 5, 364ff.). In other words, St Benard says we honour the saints in order to inflame in our own hearts and minds the desire to be like them.
This, then, is the meaning of today's Solemnity: to look at the shining example of the Saints in order to reawaken within our hearts the great longing to be like them; happy to live near God both in this life and in the next, to live in his light, with in the great family of God's friends. To truly celebrate this feast, is to manifest our desire to live our lives close to God; in fact in union with Him.
In fact, being a Saint means living in union with God, by living in union with His family-the Church, by living His will on earth as it is in heaven. This is the vocation of us all, vigorously reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council and solemnly proposed today for our attention…The universal call to Holiness, the universal call to become great saints, great friends of God in the deepest sense of the word, united with Him in love.
Our Holy Father Benedict in his homily asks another question, “But how can we become holy, friends of God? He answers, that to be a Saint requires neither extraordinary actions or works nor the possession of exceptional charisms. However, it is necessary first of all to listen to Jesus and then to follow Him without losing heart when faced by difficulties of living faithfully the duties of our daily lives in love and obedience to God and His commandment of love; this entails the cross.
Here,Pope Benedict reminds us that while the Church's experience shows that every form of holiness, even if it follows different paths, the path of holiness always passes through the Way of the Cross, the way of self-denial. The Saints' biographies describe men and women who, docile to the divine plan, sometimes faced unspeakable trials and suffering, persecution and martyrdom. They persevered in their commitment: "they... have come out of the great tribulation", one reads in Revelation, "they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Rv 7: 14). Their names are written in the book of life (cf. Rv 20: 12) and Heaven is their eternal dwelling-place.
The example of the Saints (especially those whom the Church places on the liturgical calendar) encourages us to follow in their same footsteps and to experience the joy of those who trust in God; for the one true cause of sorrow and unhappiness for men and women is to live far from God. Yes, holiness demands a constant effort, because love demands a constant effort, but holiness is possible for everyone. But rather achieving it by human effort, Holiness is first and foremost a gift of God, who is thrice Holy (cf. Is 6: 3). And we for our part must asks for it constantly through prayer.
In our second reading, the Apostle John remarks: "See what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God; and so we are" (I Jn 3: 1). It is God, therefore, who loved us first and made us His adoptive sons in Jesus. Everything in our lives is a gift of His love: how can we possibly be indifferent before such a great mystery, the mystery of His Divine love for us, mere creatures? How can we not respond to the Heavenly Father's love by living as grateful children striving to do His will? In Christ, the Father gave us the gift of His entire self, His entire wealth; and so He calls us to a personal and profound relationship with Him in response to so great a love as this. As a result, only a insane person would not want to be a saint.
Consequently, the more we imitate Jesus and remain united to Him, by our faithfulness to the Pope and the Church, the more we enter into the mystery of his divine holiness. We discover that He loves us infinitely, and this prompts us in turn to love our brethren. Loving always entails an act of self-denial, "losing ourselves", and it is precisely this that makes us happy. And this is what the Gospel of this feast proclaims, the proclamation of the Beatitudes which we have just heard in this holy church. The happiness God calls us to is crazy, out of this world happiness; the happiness that the saints enjoy known as Beatitude. And so, nothing could be a greater sadness that if by the end of our life we fail to become a saint.
In just a short while we will be entering the heart of the Eucharistic celebration that encourages and nourishes holiness. On the altar, Christ will make himself present through the priest, in the most exalted way, Christ the true Vine to whom the faithful on earth and the Saints in Heaven are united like branches. This altar becomes the very altar of heaven, uniting the pilgrim and militant Church in the world with the Church triumphant in glory, so that we can literally join with all the saints in heaven as we together adore the Lord, joining in the wedding feast of the Lamb.
In the Preface, right before the Sanctus, we will proclaim that the Saints are friends and models of life for us. Benedict ends his homily encouraging us on to perseverance in holiness by saying, "The saints didn’t fall from the sky perfect; they were born as ordinary people like you and me who first realized that God first loved them and then allow themselves to be formed by that loved into images of Jesus Himself (Benedict XVI). And so let us invoke the saints so that they may help us to imitate them and strive to respond generously, as they did, to the divine call, the call to holiness which is the call to union with the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit together with the Communion of Saints and Angels. In particular, let us invoke Mary, Mother of the Lord and mirror of all holiness. May she, the All Holy, make us faithful disciples of her Son Jesus Christ! Amen.