All Saints
Who Is a Saint?
Rev. James A. Wickersham

Do you ever feel like you broke something? I’m not talking about someone’s phone or some object that can be replaced. I mean a relationship, a family, or something entrusted to your care. Sometimes priests even wonder whether a decision they made has somehow hurt the parish they were trying to serve.

Most of us were raised to do the right thing. We learned that good choices brought good consequences and bad choices brought bad consequences. But sometimes, when we failed, someone punished us by withdrawing their love. Love became conditional. If I pleased you, you loved me. If I disappointed you, you pulled away.

Without realizing it, we can begin to think God treats us the same way. We imagine that if we sin badly enough, God will stop loving us and want nothing more to do with us.

Here is the good news: no sin can make God stop loving you. No sin can prevent him from calling you home.

That does not mean sin is harmless. Mortal sin really does rupture our communion with God. It destroys charity within us and separates us from the life of grace. But this happens because we have turned away from God, not because God has stopped loving us. Even then, he continues calling us to repent, receive his mercy, and return to him.

That brings us to the question of this feast: Who is a saint?

A saint is someone who is with God in heaven, living in the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Today we celebrate the saints whose names are known throughout the Church, but we also celebrate that “great multitude, which no one could count,” from every nation, race, people, and tongue.

Notice what Scripture says about them. Their robes are white because they “washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.” Their robes are not white because they never needed to be washed. The saints did not save themselves by being perfectly good. They were saved by Jesus Christ, who suffered, died, and rose again for them.

The second reading tells us, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are.”

We are God’s children now. We do not have to impress him enough to make him love us. We receive this new life as a gift in baptism. At the same time, Saint John tells us that “what we shall be has not yet been revealed.” We belong to God now, and he is still bringing his work within us to completion.

The Beatitudes show us what that work begins to look like: poverty of spirit, mercy, purity of heart, and peace. These qualities grow within us as we encounter the Lord’s love and mercy again and again. The saints still faced temptations, weaknesses, and disordered attachments. When they sinned, they listened to the Lord calling them back.

That is the saints’ great secret: they kept returning.

Holiness does not mean never needing mercy. Holiness means receiving God’s mercy and allowing it to change us. Over time, the sins and attachments that once held us in slavery begin to lose their hold. Christ makes us free.

Today, the saints of every age invite us to respond to the same call. God loves us. Christ has died and risen for us. The Holy Spirit is still working within us. May we continue returning to the Lord until the day when his work in us is complete and we join that countless multitude who see him face to face.