Homily for Solemnity of All Saints

Homily for the Solemnity of All Saints

1 John 3: 1-3
Nov. 1, 2020
Holy Name of Jesus, Valhalla, N.Y.
St. Joseph, New Rochelle, N.Y.                                   

“See what love the Father has bestowed on us” (1 John 3: 1).

Virgin & Child with the apostles, prophets, martyrs, & all the saints

St. John states that the Father has bestowed his love upon us, and he tells us to “see” that love.  How do we see it?  Thru his Son Jesus Christ.  God’s love took on flesh, our humanity, and lived among us (cf. John 1:14).  Jesus showed God’s love by making people whole in body and soul, by forgiving sins, and just by being present among us; by empowering his disciples to forgive sins, to comfort suffering souls, to help people confront the power of evil in the world—which the Church continues to do, taking up his charge to “go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).

St. John then teaches us why the Father has shown us so much love thru his Son Jesus:  “that we may be called the children of God” (3:1).  And not only “called” his children, but “so we are” (3:1).  It’s a spiritual fact.  Thru Jesus Christ we’ve become God’s sons and daughters.  The Gospel of John tells us, “To those who did accept [Jesus Christ] he gave power to become children of God” (1:12).  In the sacrament of Baptism we were sealed—a word the 1st reading, from Revelation, used twice—or stamped or branded (maybe today we say “tattooed”) as his own.

Jesus Christ, of course, is the Son of God by nature, the Son of God from eternity.  We’re God’s children by adoption, by our union with Jesus in sacrament and grace.  God is offering us still more, according to St. John:  “Beloved, we are God’s children now,” in this life.  “What we shall be” in eternal life “has not yet been revealed” (3:2).  We already share in God’s holiness thru our relationship with Jesus—who gives us his Holy Spirit.  We are already saints, God’s holy ones—as St. Paul often addresses the Christians he writes to.  We are called, by God choice, by God’s gift, to be his holy ones forever.  It is precisely God’s holy ones in heaven whom we celebrate today, those who are so close to the Father that they are like Jesus and see the Father as he is (cf. 3:2), like our brother Jesus.  The saints already experience the fullness of God’s love thru Christ our Lord; we pray in today’s Collect that they intercede for us that we might remain on their path of holiness until we join them and “what we shall be” is revealed to us, until we become the creatures God made us to be.

The passage from St. John ends with an aspiration.  “Everyone who has this hope based on him”—this hope of becoming even more than God’s children, of becoming more like Jesus—“makes himself pure as he is pure” (3:3).

When we hear of purity, most likely we think of sexual purity, of the virtue of chastity lived according to our particular state of life.  In 1 John, it has a broader meaning.  In the last verse of ch. 2—the verse before today’s reading—John wrote, “Everyone who acts in righteousness is begotten by him” (2:29). 

“Righteousness” came up twice in the Beatitudes in the gospel reading.  It means being in a right relationship with God, in a state of grace, in God’s favor.  When we are God’s children, that’s how we act.  That relationship begins with Baptism, but it has to be lived.  This is the purity John speaks of.

Earlier in ch. 2, John wrote, “Do not love the world or the things of the world” (2:15), and then:  “All that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life” are inclinations or temptations that would destroy our right relationship with God.  So, not only sexual lust, sexual immorality, but also greed, glitter, and gluttony, things that entice our eyes, and “a pretentious life”—pride, self-importance, arrogance, the pursuit of fame and fortune.

From all of that, God’s children strive to keep away, to make themselves pure, as our Lord Jesus is pure.  This is a daily challenge for all of us, but by God’s grace we “have this hope based on him.”  For God has chosen us, has called us, to be his children, and more:  to “be like Christ, for we shall see the Father as he is,” as his saints in heaven already do.  Thanks be to God!