(All Saints’ Day 2025: This homily was given on November 1, 2025 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12a.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: All Saints 2025]
There were two meditations in the Magnificat this week which
give us some insight on the feast we celebrate in the Church today, the
Solemnity of All Saints. The first was from a German spiritual author named Ida
Friederike Gorres, who died in 1971. She
wrote, “The saint is the most important person in the world because the
saint is the decisive answer to the big riddle: What is a human being? The saint is the terrifying statement: humans
are sanctificabilis, ‘holy-able’ [in other words, ‘able to be made holy’]. …
The human is created and called to be perfected in such holiness and to exist
in it for eternity.”
We’ve all heard the expression,
“He’s only human.” Many of us—probably
most of us—have used that expression in casual conversation at some point in
the past. Think about it for a
moment: In what circumstances is that line usually spoken? When do we look at another person and say,
“He’s only human; she’s only human”? Well,
sometimes it’s when the person makes an innocent mistake—a mistake they weren’t
expected to make.
But even more frequently that expression is used when someone commits a
sin—often a serious sin.
A man is caught in adultery, for
example, and some of his buddies will say, “Poor Bob. He just couldn’t say no. And that’s understandable, because he’s only human.”
A woman loses her temper on the
job, and some of her coworkers will say, “Joan usually keeps her cool, but she
was under a lot of stress the other day.
That’s why she lost it like she did.
It just goes to show that she’s
only human.”
We use the adjective, “human,” in situations like these, as if to imply
that to be truly human means to commit sin.
But that’s not true! And today’s feast—as well as the quote of Ida
Friederike Gorres that I just read to you—illustrate the point perfectly! Today in the Church we honor all the
saints—the canonized and the uncanonized alike.
These are men and women who died in the state of grace and who are now
living in eternal glory with Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. They show us and the world that we human
beings are, to quote Ida Friederike Gorres, “sanctificabilis”. We have the potential, in other words, to be
sanctified—to be made holy—to live a more “truly human” life—and that’s the
case regardless of what our past has been like.
From this perspective we’d have to say that to be human in the way God
intended us to be is to be free of sin.
That actually means that the only fully human person who ever lived was
Mary, our Blessed Mother. (Jesus, of course, was a divine Person so he’s in a
different category altogether)
But, in spite of the fact that
we’re not perfect like Mary was, we all have the potential to grow in our
sanctification and holiness as the saints did.
St. Maximilian Kolbe reminds us of this in the meditation of his that
was in the Magnificat this past week.
Here, among other things, he notes the importance of really desiring to
be holy. That’s key. I’ll give St. Maximillian the final word in
my homily today:
As Henri Joly says, “the Church has numbered in the ranks of
saints not only monks, along with princes and princesses, kings and queens,
emperors and empresses, but also merchants, teachers, greengrocers, farmers,
shepherds, lawyers and doctors, bankers and clerks, beggars and servants,
craftsmen, shoemakers, carpenters and blacksmiths.”
The rather widespread notion that the saints were not like us
is simply false. They also were subject
to temptation, also fell and got up again, felt oppressed by sadness, weakened,
and paralyzed by discouragement.
However, mindful of the words of the Savior: “Apart from me you can do
nothing” (Jn 15:5), and those of St. Paul: “I have strength for everything in
him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4:13), they did not rely on themselves, but,
putting all their trust in God, after every fall, they humbled themselves; they
sincerely repented, cleansed their soul in the sacrament of penance, and set
down to work with even greater fervor.
In this way, their falls served them as steps toward an ever greater
perfection ... When St. Scholastica
asked her brother St. Benedict what was needed to achieve holiness, she
received this reply: “You must want to.”
May all of us at this Mass today
be among those who “want to”—among those who truly and sincerely want to
achieve holiness—among those who truly and sincerely want to be saints.
