Homily for Solemnity of All Saints

Homily for the Solemnity of All Saints

Nov. 1, 2022
Collect                                                                 
Salesian HS freshmen, New Rochelle, N.Y.

This is a reconstruction of the homily I preached from an outline.

What—or whom—are we celebrating today?

[Several called out answers.]  The prayer we made a little while ago said that “we venerate the merits of all the saints.”  And who are “all the saints.”

[Boy answers, “Everyone who’s gone to heaven.”]

We know and recognize only a few of the people who’ve gone to heaven.  Some are famous and important.  Look at the paintings on the back wall.  You recognize our Blessed Mother, the most important of all the saints.  Around her are the apostles—very important men for the founding of Christ’s Church.

Over on the left is St. Francis de Sales, an important bishop and writer in France in the 17th century.  We Salesians are named after him:  “Salesian” comes from “Sales.”  And of course you know who’s over on the right.  [Boy says, “St. John Bosco.”]

And you know some other famous saints, like the patrons of your parishes, e.g., St. Anthony and St. Theresa.

Now look at the 6 big portraits lining our chapel walls.  They include one “official” saint, someone who’s been canonized, and 2 blesseds, “almost saints,” 5 more blesseds who died for the Faith, for their commitment to Christ, and 2 other young men who died for Christ but aren’t officially “saints.”  What all of these men have in common is that they were young, as young as 14 up to 29 years old.

[Pointing to each portrait in turn…]  For example, the 5 youths in that portrait were all between 20 and 22. Leaders in the Salesian youth center in Poznan, Poland, they were executed by the Germans in 1942 for the crime of teaching catechism, which the Nazis had made illegal in occupied Poland during WWII. They’ve been beatified, declared “blessed.”

Another WWII witness to the love of Jesus was Salvo D’Acquisto. He was an officer in the carabinieri, the Italian military police force, and wasn’t from a Salesian school.  During the German occupation of Italy in 1943, when Salvo was 22 years old, he gave up his life in place of some civilians that the Germans were preparing to execute as a reprisal.

Sean Devereux did go to a Salesian school in England.  One of the best known photos of him, depicted in the painting, shows him wearing his Salesian shirt. He went to work for the U.N. distributing food during a famine in Somalia. He was gunned down in 1993, when he was 29, because he refused to hand food supplies over to criminals instead of giving it to the hungry.

Bl. Ceferino Namuncurá and St. Dominic Savio were Salesian pupils who showed their love for Jesus by carrying out their daily responsibilities.  They studied, prayed, played, helped their schoolmates, and were devoted to their families.  Ceferino was only 19 when he died of TB in 1905.  Dominic, a pupil of St. John Bosco himself at the Oratory in Turin, was just short of 15, almost the same age as you guys.

What about all the other ordinary holy people, maybe people like your own grandmothers, who led prayerful, kind, and generous lives?  “All the saints” loved their families, did their daily work, went on vacations, played sports or cooked or had hobbies; they loved God and their neighbors, prayed, were generous, kind, and helpful.  We honor and celebrate them all.

God willing, someday people will be honoring and celebrating you and me too.