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Feast of All Saints

One of my friends recently told me this story about his Son. His Wife Angela was in the kitchen making the tea when their Son comes into the room and so Angela turns round and says “What have you been learning about at School today?” He says “We have been learning about Saints”

“Oh and what are they?”

So the Son gets the Stall that’s sitting in the kitchen and says “let me show you.” So he stands on the chair and raises his arm up and pretends to hold a shepherds crook.

The image that he had of Saints is that of the statues in the Church. For him that is all they were. The saints were these statues of well know saints in the Church.

Today we acknowledge all those people who are not named who have gone to their eternal reward and have lead a good life. These are the people that we have noticed and seen and have been known to us today. These people have tried to live a life in answer to the beatitudes that we hear today in the Gospel. We should strive just like the well know saints to be people of the beatitudes. To be gentle, to be poor in spirit, to be merciful and peacemakers, but also to be true witnesses of the Gospel even if this means that we are counter cultural. We have to stand up for our faith. So that when people do criticise us we are able to stand up and be counted.

In his recent visit to England the Holy Father reflected with the young people the meaning of being a saint in the 21^st Century Let us listen again to those words.

“When I invite you to become saints, I am asking you not to be content with second best. I am asking you not to pursue one limited goal and ignore all others, having money make it possible to be generous and to do good in the world, but in its own, it is not enough to make us happy. Being highly skilled in some activity or profession is good, but it will not satisfy us unless we aim for something greater still. It might make us famous, but it will not make us happy. . . The key to it is very simple true happiness is to be found in God”

So true happiness is to love God and experience his love for us. This is what it means to be happy and to strive to be a saint. Following the beatitudes is to fall in love with God and try and live as God’s children. But maybe the hardest task here is to accept the love of the Father. We are his Children and so should always try and accept His total love for us. This is a hard task and takes a lot of time, sometimes a life time. I think that we know it on an intellectual basses but one of the longest journeys is from the head to the heart. So let us pray that today we may find God again not only intellectually but experience his love in our hearts so we can strive for happiness which is found in the love and presence of God