Coffee With God

Reflection: Matthew 5: 1-12

Today is the feast of all saints. In medieval England, the feast was known as All Hallows’ Day, and this is why its eve is still known as Halloween. Who are these saints? Who are we celebrating today? Do saints refer to those who while living on this earth, lived a heroic Christian life, witnessing to Christ and his Gospel and now, after their death, live in the presence of the God in Heaven? In this case, a saint is necessarily someone who is dead. But the history of the Church teaches us something different. After the death of Jesus, the Jews called the followers of Jesus in a derogatory way as ‘the Galileans,’ ‘the Nazarenes’ and ‘the Christians’. It indicated that group of people who followed a Galilean who had ended up on the cross, condemned by the religious authorities. But among ourselves we did not call ourselves Christians; we called each other ‘the brothers,’ ‘The believers,’ ‘the disciples of the Lord,’ ‘those of the way’ who followed the path travelled by Jesus of Nazareth. We called ourselves ‘the saints.’ That’s why when Paul wrote his letters, he always addressed them “to the saints,” to the saints who are in Philippi, to the saints who are in Colossae, to the saints who are in Rome. He was not writing to the saints who are in heaven but to specific people who lived in Ephesus, in Corinth, in Rome. These were the saints. We will have to return to this language to become aware of what it means to belong to a community that is called to be holy. A Saint, therefore, is the one who welcomes and commits to living the proposal of man made by Jesus of Nazareth. On the feast of All Saints, we are united therefore, not only with the saints of the liturgical calendar but also with our “next door” saints – our relatives and acquaintances. This is the feast of all of us, a holy occasion to increase our faith and hope. The Gospel says blessed are the poor, while the world says blessed are the rich. The Gospel says blessed are the meek, while the world says blessed are the proud. Jesus declares the pure in heart as blessed, contradicting the world that tempts us to crave for pleasures and comforts. In his homily on the Feast of All Saints in 2020, Pope Francis called on faithful to pursue the virtues of the Gospel, in contradiction to the ways of the world and thus give witness to Christian hope. The feast day “reminds us of the personal and universal vocation to holiness. Blessed Virgin Mary is called the Queen of All Saints, and our mother teaches everyone how to follow her Son, Jesus. May our Mother help us nourish the desire for holiness, walking the way of the Beatitudes.”