{"id":2029,"date":"2007-10-30T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-30T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/homily-for-november-1-2007-all-saints.html"},"modified":"2007-10-30T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-30T06:00:00","slug":"homily-for-november-1-2007-all-saints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/homily-for-november-1-2007-all-saints.html","title":{"rendered":"Homily for November 1, 2007: All Saints"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>
Originally published in CONNECT!<\/a> by Liturgical Publications, Inc.<\/a>.
<\/span>
Shortly after he converted to Catholicism in the late 1930s, Thomas Merton was walking the streets of New York with his friend, Robert Lax. Lax was Jewish, and he asked Merton what he wanted to be, now that he was Catholic. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Merton replied, adding simply that he wanted to be a good Catholic. <\/p>\n

Lax stopped him in his tracks. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you should say,\u201d he told him, \u201cis that you want to be a saint!\u201d <\/p>\n

Merton was dumbfounded. <\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you expect me to become a saint?,\u201d Merton asked him. <\/p>\n

Lax said: \u201cAll that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don\u2019t you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you will consent to let him do it? All you have to do is desire it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Thomas Merton knew his friend was right. Merton, of course, would go on to become one of the great spiritual thinkers and writers of the last century. His friend Bob Lax would later convert to Catholicism himself — and begin his own journey to try and be a saint. <\/p>\n

But the words Lax spoke ring down through the decades to all of us today. Because they speak so simply and profoundly to our calling as Catholic Christians. <\/p>\n

You should want to be a saint. And to be one, all you need is to want to be one. <\/p>\n

Of course, if you only want to be a run-of-the-mill, average Christian, that\u2019s probably all you\u2019ll ever be. Every one can do just enough to get by. It\u2019s not hard.
But the message Christ sends to all of us is an invitation to be something more. In the words of the old Army recruiting ad: be all that you can be. <\/p>\n

Be a saint. <\/p>\n

If anyone has any doubts how to do that, Matthew\u2019s gospel today is a helpful how-to guide. You might call it \u201cBecoming a Saint for Dummies.\u201d <\/p>\n

We know it better as The Beatitudes. <\/p>\n

\u201cBlessed are…\u201d With those two words Jesus begins a beautiful instruction in how to live the life of a saint. Pope Benedict has taken that a step further: in his remarkable book \u201cJesus of Nazareth,\u201d he suggests that the beatitudes are nothing less than a self-portrait of Christ. <\/p>\n

It is a portrait of what all of us should aspire to.<\/p>\n

To be poor in spirit\u2026to be meek\u2026to be merciful. <\/p>\n

To hunger and thirst for righteousness. <\/p>\n

To be clean of heart and to make peace. <\/p>\n

Taken as a whole, the Beatitudes also sum up the beautiful refrain of today\u2019s responsorial psalm. <\/p>\n

Because \u201cLord, this is the people that longs to see your face.\u201d <\/p>\n

This is the people that want to be saints. <\/p>\n

Most of us are familiar with the phenomenal saintly stories of the Church. We grew up hearing of how John was beheaded, and Stephen was stoned; how Francis got the stigmata, or how Therese suffered humiliations and disease to die an early death. You hear stories like that and you can\u2019t blame Thomas Merton for not really being eager to be a saint. It\u2019s not only hard work, it often doesn\u2019t have a happy ending.<\/p>\n

But those are the stories we hear about. There are countless stories \u2013 millions, throughout the centuries \u2013 that we don\u2019t. They are the anonymous saints who go about their daily lives quietly, peacefully, joyfully, finally entering into the fullness of grace without doing anything more dramatic than merely living the beatitudes. <\/p>\n

They are the unsung saints. <\/p>\n

<\/a>If you visit the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, you\u2019ll see magnificent tapestries lining the walls. And they really are magnificent, designed and executed by the artist John Nava. They remind me of the work of Norman Rockwell or Andrew Wyeth \u2013 dramatic, realistic, and contemporary depictions of ordinary people of extraordinary character. And they adorn the walls of the cathedral the same way that stained glass windows once decorated the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe.
In the tapestries, you can see all the familiar saints whose names we know, in a row, facing toward the altar, as if in line for communion. It is \u2013 literally and figuratively \u2013 the communion of the saints. There is St. Nicholas, St. Gregory, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis, St. Clare\u2026and on and on, with their names over their heads. <\/p>\n

But scattered among those saints are people without names \u2013 people you won\u2019t find in Butler\u2019s \u201cLives of the Saints.\u201d A teenage girl. A young man from the barrio. Children in contemporary clothes. They are the saints whose names are known only to God. It is a beautiful and eloquent depiction of the day we celebrate today: All Saints. <\/p>\n

And the message of those tapestries is the message of this feast day: these unknown saints are just as worthy as they ones who are known. They look like us. They look like people we might pass on the street. If they can be holy, can\u2019t we all? <\/p>\n

What does it take to join them? <\/p>\n

As Bob Lax explained, to a man whom some people today consider a saint: <\/p>\n

All you really need\u2026is to want to. <\/p>\n

And God will do all the rest. <\/p>\n

Second Image: from the tapestries at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, by John Nava. Property John Nava and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in CONNECT! by Liturgical Publications, Inc..Shortly after he converted to Catholicism in the late 1930s, Thomas Merton was walking the streets of New York with his friend, Robert Lax. Lax was Jewish, and he asked Merton what he wanted to be, now that he was Catholic. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Merton replied, adding simply…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hanging-with-saints","category-homilies"],"yoast_head":"\nHomily for November 1, 2007: All Saints - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/10\/homily-for-november-1-2007-all-saints.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Homily for November 1, 2007: All Saints - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Originally published in CONNECT! by Liturgical Publications, Inc..Shortly after he converted to Catholicism in the late 1930s, Thomas Merton was walking the streets of New York with his friend, Robert Lax. 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