| Readings: | Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14 1 John 3: 1-3 Matthew 5:1-12a |
| Date: | November 1, 2024, Solemnity of All Saints |
How many of you had a real jack-0-lantern at your house for Halloween this year? I read a comment this week that said being a Christian saint is like being a jack-o-lantern. God picks you from the field, brings you in, and washes all the dirt off you. Then he cuts off the top and scoops out the yucky stuff. He removes the pulp of impurity and injustice and seeds of doubt, hate, and greed. Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light of holiness inside you to shine for the entire world to see."
Allowing God to turn us into jack-o-lanterns so that we let God's light shine on the world around us is a great analogy that reminds us why we are here this morning, and every time we come to Mass. Celebrating the Eucharist is the way we deepen our baptismal commissioning to be effective instruments in God's plan to bring salvation to the world. When we were baptized we were anointed to be the body of Christ, living out our lives as priest, prophet, and king so that we help bring about the salvation of the world.
Our second reading from the first letter of John, which is one of my favorite scripture passages, helps me understand how God becoming human as Jesus of Nazareth, and how the Church, continuing to be the incarnation of God's love today, brings about this promised Kingdom of God here on earth. The author of that letter says that we really can't even imagine what life in heaven is like. But he goes on to say that we know one thing about that life in heaven and that is we will become, we will be, like God because we will finally see God as God truly is. God is love. God is not just a being who loves but is love itself. So when we are able to see God, standing before love itself face to face, we will become love as well.
I am sure all of us here at one time or another have had the human experiencing of being face to face with someone you know loves you, maybe a spouse, or a parent, or a child. In that moment, we are changed to be more loving ourselves. Love changes us in to love. At one level, that is all Jesus did in his life here on earth. He walked around and encountered people. But because Jesus is God incarnate, that encounter with Jesus was an encounter with God who is love. And we have so many stories of how that encounter changed people in fundamental ways, from the apostles who followed him for those 3 years, to the momentary encounter of the blind man we heard about in Sunday's Gospel. By our baptisms, we are called to continue what Jesus did: to be the body of Christ, the incarnation of God's love here and now so that those who encounter us can experience an encounter with God's love. The better we carry out our mission to be the body of Christ, the faster this world will be turned into the Kingdom of God. And in the process, All Saints Day will become our feast day. May you let God turn each one of us in to the best Jack-O-Lantern so that the light of God can shine brightly in our part of the pumpkin patch.