November 2018
"In the Company of Saints We Become Saints"
The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of malice shall not touch them: in the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, but they are in peace.
1. This passage from the book of Wisdom shows the victory of the saints… and that is what this day is about… all the souls in heaven who have passed victoriously through the great tribulation of life in this world. They are alive and are still very much with us. And they remember their time spent down here. They did it, with the help of God’s grace, so can we!
2. On 1 November, the world celebrated its feast… Halloween… the celebration of death without any reference to this victory… without any reference to God … a sort of glorification of death and things of hell … witches, goblins, skeletons, blood sucking spiders and vampires … and similar things that just barely exist… phantoms all … barely real because they are evil, they lack what is required for full life and existence (thus they prefer black as their colour). They are separated from God, Who said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. Halloween is a feast without any hope … Whereas the Solemnity of All Saints is full of hope, love and life … eternal life … eternal victory.
3. Thus St. Philip Neri often said, “the great thing is to become a saint.” St. Teresa of Jesus says, “in the company of saints we become saints.” Often we say, “It is not so much WHAT you know but WHO you know.” Nice to have friends in high places. If we know and love the Saints above and seek to be with them, we will become saints ourselves. If we become saints ourselves, others will join in our company. Thus, His Majesty’s saying: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” As St. Paul says, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Have we made some friends there? They can be very helpful…very influential.
4. Consider an example of this from the Life of St. Catherine of Siena by Blessed Raymond:
The Lord appeared to her very frequently indeed, and had long conversations with her. Sometimes He brought His most glorious Mother with Him, or St. Dominic, or both together, or it might be Mary Magdalene, or John the Evangelist, or Paul the Apostle, or other saints, either all together or each one separately, according to His pleasure. (p. 96)
Before long St. Catherine was leading a company of saints to heaven.
5. In a similar manner St. Teresa of Jesus was assisted in making her Carmelite foundation by Our Lady, St. Joseph, Saints Peter and Paul, St. Dominic, St. Clare, St. Peter Alcantara and many others in heaven. The Carmelites she reformed will last unto the end of the world, ever seeking to be a company of saints in which many can become saints.
6. One of the signs of God’s wrath upon the world is that each man is left to go his own way, and that neighbour will devour neighbour. We have a choice ever in front of us during these difficult times … either we go our own way or we strive to become saints in the company of saints. Blessed Francis Palau was told by the Church in mystic transports: “If you do not save others, you will not save yourself.” We must never forget man cannot save himself … he cannot baptise himself, give himself absolution, and so on … we are saved in a company … His Majesty sent out his disciples two by two. He described a healthy faith as a mustard seed that becomes a tree for a flock of birds. Families are the foundation of the society … parishes the foundation of a diocese … dioceses foundations to the Church. To make these foundations heaven bound, we need help … aid that comes only from above … from heaven.
7. The Saints are vitally interested and active in heaven for our well-being here on earth. They are resting in peace but they are not resting in non-activity. Their memories have been purified of evil, but they have not forgotten what it is like to live here in this vale of tears. St. Therese put it like this:
I believe that the Blessed in Heaven have great compassion for our miseries. They remember that when they were weak and mortal like us, they committed the same faults themselves and went through the same struggles, and their fraternal tenderness becomes still greater than it ever was on earth. It’s on account of this that they never stop watching over us and praying for us.
8. St. Therese often stressed the connection between the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant … writing to the seminarian she was praying for: “I am not your little sister for nothing, and I promise you that after my departure for eternal life I will give you a taste of the happiness that can be found from feeling a friendly soul close by.”
9. The Saints are not deaf to our pleas and our needs. Rather, it is more likely that we are deaf and blind to the help they want to give us. Let’s call upon them in love and confidence and they will show us their love. Let’s always be reading a life of a saint to get to know them and see how they fulfilled the Beatitudes and reached their heavenly goal so surely … for the great thing is to become saints … and in the company of saints we become saints. Let us never cease to strive to become saints ourselves to form a company of saints longing for heaven.
10. Let us not forget that to live in the company of saints, we must be united in love … God’s love. All the saints in heaven are ONE in terms of love … because true love unites. As St. Augustine learned and taught so well, the soul’s desire for love is only satisfied by the Infinite. That is why nothing in or of this world can ever satisfy it. And those who try will end up in a shadowy existence, and Halloween will be their feast day!
Again, even if the whole universe could be possessed by a soul, it would not be satisfied … it would not be happy. The human soul must have Infinite Love. St. John of the Cross, building on St. Thomas, comes to our aid: when he says that the soul longs
to love God with a purity and perfection with which she is loved by Him, in order to requite [return the favour to] Him… This desire of the soul is the equality of love with God for which, both naturally and supernaturally, she ever longs, because the lover cannot be satisfied if he feels not that he loves as much as he is loved.
St. John then explains that this can only happen in heaven … and goes even so far to say the soul would not be happy without being able to love this way. How is this possible? How can we love on equal terms with the infinite God!? It is only possible if we enter into the same act of love that God has for Himself. God the Father is the Lover. God the Son, the beloved. God the Holy Ghost is the Love they share. Because the saint enters into the inner life of the Most Holy Trinity, this equality becomes possible! God is in the saint loving Himself … making an equality of love possible.
11. As a result of this mysterious union, the soul in heaven is so bound up with God and God with the soul that there is a certain conformity between them such that one seems to be the other. In heaven, God and the soul will say to each other: ‘All my things are thine and thine are mine.’ As a sort of similitude … even as the soul communicates life and action to the body, so (but in a much more ineffable manner) will God communicate to the soul His Life and Love so that “you may be filled unto the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19). The saints are truly “hidden with Christ IN God” (Col 3:3).
See, then, the ONENESS of God with the community of Saints! Love shares all and unites all! This is only possible because the soul in heaven enters into the one act of God knowing and loving Himself. Heaven is not viewing God from the outside but somehow being with and in Him on the inside. Does this not give new meaning to the phrase of the Fathers… “God became man so that man might become God?”
12. To become a saint now … to form a company of saints in this life (a family, a parish, a confraternity), so that many can become saints in heaven … requires we be united in true and authentic love of God and neighbour (i.e., we must be in a state of grace). If we are going to practice for heaven, then, we must practice loving each other properly (i.e., we must do good works) ... To become a saint, then, let us always be about praying and working to love God and our fellow man daily and as often as the opportunities present themselves.
Thanks to the Regina Prophetarum website, where hundreds of uplifting sermons by unnamed parish priests can be listened to on podcast.