ALL HOLY  MEN 
AND WOMEN, 

PRAY  FOR  US

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “All Holy Men and Women, Pray for Us.”

In the Rite of Baptism there is a short litany, that goes like this,

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.

St. John the Baptist, pray for us.

St. Joseph, pray for us.

Saint Peter and Saint Paul, pray for us.”

Then the final petition is, “All holy men and women, pray for us.”

That’s where I got the title of this homily.

ALL SAINTS DAY

Today we celebrate all the saints and we ask all of them to pray for us.

And we also look to their lives and imitate their good example.

If you come to the Easter Vigil or if you’ve been at an ordination you know that the sung litany there is much longer and includes a lot more saints by name.

Today we’re simply celebrating - praying to - and asking all the saints - known and unknown - to pray for us.

UNKNOWN SAINTS

We know a lot of saints by name and we have our favorites: St. Teresa of Avila, St. Theresa of Lisieux and Mother Teresa of Calcutta - just to name three.

Today, on all Saints Day, we can look into our lives and name and celebrate holy people - not just saints in prayers, altars, holy cards, but also saints we know - saints who have been part of our lives - a grandparent, a wonderful lady on our street when we were growing up and old nun.

I remember someone telling me about a discovery she had. A lady next door to her mom dropped in every day to bring her mom soup, some oatmeal raisin cookies - her mom’s favorite, and 5 minutes of chat and a Hail Mary, an Our Father and a Glory Be together. Her mom lived in Wisconsin, and this other  lady just happened to drop in to see her mom while on a business trip. After this lady who just stopped in left, this daughter asked her mom, “Who’s that?” Her mom said she was a nice lady from next door. She asked her mom, “How long has she been doing that?” “About 2 1/2 years now,” her mom said. Then her daughter said, “ Two comments ‘Nice! And great oatmeal raisin cookies.”

There are a lot of saints like that in our world.

You can meet them as check-out counter ladies, doctors, nurses, lawn men, mechanics, physical therapists, book club members or what have you, in the St. Vincent de Paul Society.”

“All holy men and women, pray for us.”

SUFFISM

I remember hearing in a talk years ago that a very spiritual branch of Islam is Sufism. And one of the key teachings is to be a saint, but keep it quiet, and to become an unknown saint.

I think Christianity has that same branch on its tree.

All one has to do to be a saint is to simply love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

All one has to do is to live out the Beatitudes - that we heard in today’s gospel.

Saints come in all kinds of sizes, shapes and situations.

They are not thinking about waltzing into heaven in bright white garments. They are concerned about people in all kinds of outfits all around them.

Saints are sinners in a new edition.

I remember a talk a neat saintly priest once gave. He said something like this, “Sin is a stain on our souls. We know what it it’s like to spill and drop our food on our clothes and they cause stains.”

Then he said, “Sin is a stain….”

He paused and looked into his open hand and said, “I have 5 letters in my hand. An S, a T, an A, an I and a T.  “They can spell out the word “stain”. Then he added, I can throw these 5 letters up in the air to God and then he spinned around and said, “I can catch these 5 letters as they come back down to earth. But look,” he said, “This time they spell out the word, ‘S A I N T.’”

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily is, “All Holy Men and Women, Pray for Us.”