Meditation for All Saints Sunday – Gospel: Matthew 10:32-33, 37-38 and 19:27-30
“Lord, see, we have left everything and followed you”
There is no more fitting or beautiful saying than this one, which we can offer in response to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon us last Sunday at Pentecost.
On this Sunday after Pentecost, the Church commemorates all the saints. This cloud of saints proves that Pentecost is an ongoing event in history and that the Holy Spirit is always at work; these fruits are the best proof. This is God’s will: that we be holy as our heavenly Father is holy. God’s will is for us to enter into communion with his holiness.
In the beginning was the Word (Christ), and the Word, the second Person, was with God, that is, in God’s company, in a movement of constant communication and love. The Word was turned toward God. And this Word became flesh, and Jesus wanted people in turn to be turned toward God; in other words, he wanted them to share the glory he had with his Father. Jesus came to fulfil the Father’s will and to make us human beings sharers in the life of the Most Holy
Trinity, that is, to turn our love and our movement toward the Father. After the Ascension, Christ sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, and the truth is Christ; and Christ leads us to the Father. The Holy Spirit came down on the day of Pentecost to continue what Jesus had begun, that is, to cry out “in us with groanings too deep for words: Abba, Father!”
Who, then, is a saint? It is the one who, like the Bride, together with the Spirit, cries out to Christ, “Come!” Yes, you called us and we followed you, in the words of the closing lines of the book of Revelation. A saint is someone who directs the strength of his love toward God. And it is the Spirit who urges and leads us to this. The descent of the Holy Spirit asks of us a living response, expressed in the most beautiful words: “See, we have left everything and followed you.”
Saint John Chrysostom, commenting on this saying, pauses to ask: “What did you leave, Peter?” Wasn’t it just a net and some fish? Peter was neither rich nor one of the great ones of this world.
Here lies the secret of the “leaving” that Peter carried out: he turned his love from everything toward Jesus, even if all he offered was a widow’s mite. We leave everything, whether that everything is small or great, it doesn’t matter; what matters is that Christ becomes everything to us. And that is holiness.
Holiness is much more than some moral perfections, and more than behaviours we call Christian virtues. These are the results of a heart that loves much and for which Christ has become all its love. This love does not require abandoning or disowning any other loved one. That is why Jesus said, “Whoever loves… more than me is not worthy of me.” This makes two things clear: first, the order of priorities in the heart, and second, the kind of love it is.
First, when Jesus is everything to us, any other love that contradicts this is rejected; and second, before the love of Jesus every idolatrous love and every selfish affection falls away. At Jesus’ feet we offer each of our loves for anyone dear to us, offering it as prayer, intercession, service and devotion. Did he not command us, “Love one another as I have loved you”? From this point of view, a saint is not someone who loves only Jesus, but someone who loves everything in Jesus. For everything is an opportunity to prove that we love Jesus, especially when we remember that everything is also loved by Jesus, and that our Lord has placed it in our path for us to carry as a cross, as a mission, or to bring it the Good News. A saint is someone who has realized that he is simply a messenger of the Lord Jesus, that every person is beloved because they are the object of his Master’s love, and that our Lord has sent him to them.
Are we parents? Let us love our children to the end; and is there any greater love than to turn them toward Jesus? In this way we continue the work of the Holy Spirit. If in our children we love our own feelings more than Jesus, then on the one hand we do not love them with true love, and on the other we are not worthy of the Lord. A saint is someone who has loved the Lord so much that everything his Lord loves has become dear to him.
And as the apostle says today in the Letter to the Hebrews: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight… looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2). With all these saints, then, we cry out, “Lord, we leave everything because we have followed you,” and we cry out with the Spirit and the Bride, “Come, Lord Jesus!” And to the Lord Jesus our answer is always “yes,” never “no.”
O Heavenly King, come and dwell in us, cleanse us from every stain and purify the love within us, so that we may walk in the way of your saints.
Amen.
