Bishop Barron's All Saints' Day Sunday Sermon on the meaning of sainthood
Bishop Barron delivers a Sunday sermon for All Saints' Day, drawing on the day's three readings to explain what it truly means to be a saint.
Summary
Bishop Barron uses All Saints' Day falling on a Sunday as an occasion to explore the question of what a saint actually is, drawing on the Book of Revelation, the First Letter of John, and the Beatitudes. He argues that sainthood is not about being a nice person but about something far more radical: worshipping God as the highest good, becoming an adopted child of God and participant in the divine life, and ordering the soul away from lesser distractions toward righteousness. He ties together the three readings to show that Catholic worship — particularly the Eucharist — is the earthly anticipation of the heavenly life the saints already enjoy. He closes with Thomas Aquinas's answer to his sister's question about how to become a saint: "Will it."
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
All Saints' Day and the Question of Sainthood
Bishop Barron: Peace be with you. Friends, we have a special privilege this year because All Saints' Day falls on a Sunday, so the Church can give it special attention. Saints. Leon Bloy is the one who said there's only one real sadness in life, and that's not to be a saint. Everything else falls away. That's the principal preoccupation. We say that the ordinary goal of the Christian life is to be a saint. We say that in heaven there are only saints. It's of supreme importance. That's the point. Everything else falls away. Being a saint is what the whole spiritual life is about.
So this feast day raises that question in a very pointed way: What is a saint? What does it mean to be a hero, to be successful in the spiritual order? We can name heroism in different fields rather easily. But when it comes to the highest thing, what does it mean to be successful in this realm? To be a saint.
I want to take something from each of our three readings for this feast day. They shed light on this issue in different ways.
The Book of Revelation: Heaven as Worship
Our first reading today is taken from the always strange, always wonderful, always intriguing, always puzzling Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. The author of that book is given a set of visions. He looks into heaven and then describes what he sees there. Here is one of his visions. He sees 144,000 from the land of Israel, taken from the twelve tribes. But then he sees along with them this enormous multitude that no one could count, from every race and tongue and people and nation. He's seeing this throng of the saints in heaven, gathered from Israel and then from the new Israel of the Church.
What is this mighty throng doing? Do you ever wonder that question? What do you do in heaven? What is the life of heaven like? Listen. They — all these people — stood before the throne and before the Lamb and cried out with a loud voice: "Salvation comes from our God who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb." Shouting out their praise of God and of Christ.
Then he sees holy angels prostrate around the throne. The angels give us a clue, too, because you might say they're like super saints. They're creatures, but they're at a higher spiritual pitch than we are. So they're in heaven too. What are they doing? Listen. They're worshipping God and exclaiming: "Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honour, power, and might be to our God forever and ever." You're tempted to say "Amen" right there.
What's being described — in highly symbolic language, I know — is the attitude of worship. What's happening in heaven among the saints and the holy angels is worship. From "worth-ship." What's of highest value? Just last week I talked about it. Jesus — what's the central law? What sums up the whole law? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength." What's that but the attitude of worship? That means ordering your life to what's of highest value.
The biblical principle is not belief or unbelief. It's not worship or lack of worship. Everybody worships something. All you have to do — a mob hitman worships something — because all you have to do is ask the question: what's of highest value to you? What's the central point around which your life revolves? What's the highest good that you aim toward? That's what you worship. Everyone worships something. A saint is someone who worships God, and his or her entire life now falls into a kind of ordered harmony around that central act of worship.
Stay with that question a little bit as you examine your own spiritual and moral life. Ask it and answer it honestly. What do you worship? "Oh, I worship God." Really? I'm asking myself that question all the time. I'm a bishop of the Church and I preach the gospel, but what am I actually worshipping? What's of highest value to me?
The saint is someone who worships God. Can you see how, for Catholics, the Mass is an anticipation of heaven? That's why when you walk into a church where the Mass is celebrated, you're walking out of an ordinary world into a higher world. That's why it's decorated with images of the saints and the angels and of the Trinity — because you've been brought up into this anticipation of heaven. That's what the Mass is. But it's another way of saying a rightly ordered life. Don't think of it as going to Mass for all eternity. The Mass is an anticipation here in time and space of what this higher life is like. A saint on earth is someone who's anticipating this reality.
It's interesting: when we formally declare somebody a saint in the Church, one meaning of that declaration is that we're declaring this person is definitely in heaven — this person is joining the angels and saints already there in right praise.
The First Letter of John: Becoming Children of God
Our second reading for today is taken from that equally extraordinary First Letter of St. John. In many ways, the whole spiritual life can be read off of the First Letter of John. Here's what we hear in the reading: "Beloved, see what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are."
Look around the religions of the world. We're servants of God, we're slaves of God, we're followers of God, we're obedient to God. Sure, all that's true. But the radicality of Christianity, as expressed right here, is that we're called and invited to become the children of God. To become members of God's family. To share in God's life. To be deified. The Greek fathers talk about theosis. It's rendered in Latin as deificatio — deification — becoming a participant in God's nature.
"Oh, the goal of the Christian life is to make me a nice person." Come on. Don't bore me with being a nice person. I'm all in favour of it, but an atheist can be a nice person. That's not the goal of the Christian life. No, the goal of the Christian life is to become a new creation. Someone who is living the very life of God, the life that God is. That's it.
Becoming a member of God's family — think of it this way. Jesus is the Son of God in the full sense, and we can't approach that. He's the Son of God by nature, but we become sons and daughters of God by adoption. We are brought into a share in that life. Think of a child who's adopted into a family and now beautifully shares the name of people in that family, lives in the house where that family lives, has access to the resources that family has, shares in the life of that family. To be a saint is to be invited into the household of God, to live as an adopted son or daughter of God, to share in the beauty and truth and goodness of God's way of being.
I don't think we Christians fully understand what's at stake here, how radically we have to think about the goal of the Christian life. Not just to be a nice person. No — living God's life.
Bringing the Readings Together: The Eucharist
Can I bring these two together? A saint is someone who worships; a saint is someone who's in the household of God, who has become a child of God. Bring them together. What does Catholic worship look like? It looks like eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus. As I worship God, I now take into my own body, soul, mind, and heart the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. I become assimilated unto him. I become a member of his mystical body. That's what it means to be a saint. A person of right praise. A person in the household of God who eats the body and drinks the blood of Jesus. That's a saint.
The Beatitudes: Ordering the Soul Toward God
The Church always proposes this gospel to us on the Feast of All Saints — namely, the famous introduction to the Sermon on the Mount that we call the Beatitudes. Beatitudo in Latin just means happiness. And the word hiding behind that in the Greek of the New Testament is makarios. Jesus keeps saying makarios, makarios. Makarios means something like blessed, or happy, or even lucky. How lucky you are. How blessed you are.
What do we hear first? "Blessed are the merciful." Now watch. If you're worshipping God — God is the summum bonum, the highest good toward which your whole life is ordered — and God's name is love, God is love, then you become aligned to the mercy that God is. You become merciful yourself. If you're a son or daughter of God, sharing in God's life and God's household, then you become attuned to God. You become merciful.
What else do we hear? "Blessed are the clean of heart." And "blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness." The clean of heart means I have an undistracted heart. I'm single-hearted — that's the way some translations have it. Not distracted by lower goods. I'm ordered to the highest good. That's called worship. And "blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." What are we hungry and thirsty for? Fame and power and money and country and family — all the lesser goods. I get it. But that's not what I'm hungry and thirsty for at the deepest level of my soul if I'm a saint. I'm hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Do you see how those two beatitudes are expressions of worship?
Notice what else. "Blessed are the poor in spirit" — happy are you if you're not distracted by the mere material goods of the world. "Blessed are the meek" — happy are you if you're not distracted by this desire for worldly power. "Blessed are they who mourn" — happy are you if you're not distracted by this constant need for pleasure and for good feelings. Finally, "blessed are those persecuted for righteousness" — how lucky you are, how blessed you are, if you're not preoccupied with honour and the esteem of others. You're free from that so that you can worship the highest good. So that you can truly hunger and thirst for righteousness. So that you can be really single-hearted.
Do you see how all the beatitudes are about the ordering of the soul toward God and worship? They're about participating in God, becoming a son or daughter. They're about being a saint.
Will It: Thomas Aquinas on Becoming a Saint
Thomas Aquinas's sister asked him one time, "What do I have to do to become a saint?" And the great Aquinas said, "Will it." There's truth to that. That's the cooperation with grace. Desire it. Want it. Want to worship God above all things. Want to be a member of God's household. Want to be rid of all these distractions. Want to hunger and thirst for righteousness alone.
All Saints — we celebrate. How beautiful that I'm describing the essential qualities of all the saints. But why is there such a variety? Because this can be instantiated in a billion different ways. That's why God has created so many of us individually. He wants these truths to be exemplified in a billion different ways. God wants you — you listening to me right now — to honour him in your very particular way.
So love the Lord your God with your whole heart, whole soul, whole mind. Worship God alone. Become a member of his household. And you'll find the beatitude, the happiness, that belongs to all the saints. And God bless you.