There’s a feel for heaven in all of us, surely. Maybe just as a seed that one day will open out. When we love someone, really love, love them not just for what we get from them but for what they are, then we cannot bear the idea of them dying, no longer existing. Any real love wants to last and last for ever, wants eternity for the one we love and therefore for ourselves as well. In English the words for live and love are only one letter different. Likewise in German: leben, to live, and lieben, to love. And in German there’s another word too only one letter different: loben, to praise. To live is to love and to love is to praise, and these three things are all seeds of eternity in us.
St John takes us God’s side of it. “Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us…” Our little loving wants our beloved to live for ever and live to the full, but we can’t of ourselves bring that about. But God’s love can. God loves us and his love makes us live for ever. Our faith tells us a) that we have immortal souls and b) will live one day in a resurrected body. These are doctrines that tell us we are loved. This is the love the Father lavishes on us. This is the seed of heaven his love has planted in us.
The saints we celebrate today confirm this. “A huge number impossible to count, of people from every nation, race, tribe and language,” says the Apocalypse. Here below, we carry the seed, those above are opened flowers. Here, the orchestra is tuning up; there the symphony rings out. Field upon field of them, rank upon rank, circle upon circle. In a little while, I believe, the Holy Father will be asked to approve the latest edition of the Roman Martyrology. This is the book that contains the names of the those recognised as blessed or saints in the Catholic Church, many thousands of them. It’s a precious way of remembering holy people, but it’s only a small earthly sign of the heavenly Book of Life that lies open on the infinite lap of our heavenly Father, a book that’s still open and in which, please God, our names will be found written. According to our Martyrology, on All Saints’ Day, we remember “all the holy ones who are with Christ in glory”, all those who have sailed their boats into the haven of the heavenly Father, those who have made the pilgrimage to that house of many rooms, the “huge number impossible to count.” We think of the great saints of Scripture and Church history, known and honoured. We recall all our fellow believers, all those, often unknown to history, whose lives have been shaped by the Beatitudes, who have put their feet in the footsteps of Christ and “have gone before us with the sign of faith”, all those whom the current of their baptism has carried into the ocean of everlasting life. But God’s arms and Mother Church’s heart are wider still. Our generous, magnanimous Church teaches that those untouched by explicit Christian faith can reach heaven too: “Those also, said Vatican II, can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life” (Lumen Gentium, 16). Heaven lies open to the walking wounded of the world.
“God wills that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” And wherever there is salvation, even in the times and places remotest from the Church’s visible, sacramental activity, the Church’s motherhood unfolds. This is why the Church cherishes the vocation to the contemplative life and the call of hermits, monks and nuns who live to some extent apart from the world. They do so to pray for it, to weave it into God. They are the Church’s motherhood at prayer and their reach is universal. And so with the elderly, the sick and the housebound. It’s why, though Pope Benedict stepped down from active ministry as Pope, he continued to pray. And so, with hearts enlarged by the vision of the saints, we can hope and pray for friends and relatives who don’t share our faith, but in whom God’s grace can still be pursuing its heavenly purposes. It’s not often sung, but you may remember a hymn of Frederick Faber, the 19th c Oratorian priest:
1 There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice,
which is more than liberty.
2 There is welcome for the sinner,
and more graces for the good.
There is mercy with the Saviour,
there is healing in his blood.
4 For the love of God is broader
than the measures of the mind,
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.”
Today we can feel that breadth. May we grow a wide, Catholic heart! May we grasp the dimensions of that mystical Body of which Mary is mother!
So, brothers and sisters, let’s strive to enter the narrow gate. Let’s have a culture of holiness, a sense that we’re called to be saints, even though we feel far from being such. Hallow’een is a poor and hollow alternative, an empty pumpkin, to what today’s feast offers us – which is life not death, confidence not scariness, light not darkness. The cult of stars and celebrities is a poor alternative too to the Saints who surround us. So let’s have a culture of the Saints: read about them, think about them, connect to them, pray with them. They’re given us, a huge number. They take away our loneliness. They’re Jesus in others and give us hope that he can be in us.
St Mary’s Cathedral, Aberdeen, 1 November 2024
