A reflection for Sunday, 1 November: In Festo Omnium Sanctorum, I classis, with the commemoration of the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost
The vestments are white, and the Introit begins with joy: Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem festum celebrantes sub honore Sanctorum omnium: de quorum solemnitate gaudent Angeli, et collaudant Filium Dei. “Let us all rejoice in the Lord, celebrating a festival day in honour of all the Saints: at whose solemnity the Angels rejoice, and give praise to the Son of God.” Its verse is from the thirty-second Psalm: Exsultate, iusti, in Domino: rectos decet collaudatio, “Rejoice in the Lord, O ye just: praise becometh the upright.”
The same Introit, with only the name changed, opens the Masses of the Assumption and of several other great feasts. Today it opens onto the widest possible horizon. The Church does not honour one saint, or one order of saints, but all of them together: the Apostles and Martyrs whose names we sing in the Canon, the confessors and virgins of the calendar, and the uncounted multitude whose names are known to God alone. Among them are fathers and mothers, labourers and servants, children who died in their baptismal innocence, and perhaps some of our own dead. The Angels rejoice, the Introit says, and they praise not the saints but the Son of God. Every saint is His work.
This year the feast falls on a Sunday, and the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost yields to it, keeping only a commemoration. The meeting is fitting. On the Lord’s Day, the day of the Resurrection, the Church looks at the harvest of the Resurrection. Tomorrow, on All Souls, she will turn to the members of the same Body who are still being made ready. Today she lifts her eyes and shows us where the road ends.
I. Turbam magnam: the Epistle
“In those days: Behold I John saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the sign of the living God; and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying: Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, till we sign the servants of our God in their foreheads. And I heard the number of them that were signed, an hundred forty-four thousand were signed, of every tribe of the children of Israel. Of the tribe of Juda, were twelve thousand signed: of the tribe of Ruben, twelve thousand signed: of the tribe of Gad, twelve thousand signed: of the tribe of Aser, twelve thousand signed: of the tribe of Nephthali, twelve thousand signed: of the tribe of Manasses, twelve thousand signed: of the tribe of Simeon, twelve thousand signed: of the tribe of Levi, twelve thousand signed: of the tribe of Issachar, twelve thousand signed: of the tribe of Zabulon, twelve thousand signed: of the tribe of Joseph, twelve thousand signed: of the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand signed. After this, I saw a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, and in sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands: and they cried with a loud voice, saying: Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb. And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the ancients, and about the four living creatures; and they fell before the throne upon their faces, and adored God, saying: Amen. Benediction, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, honour, and power, and strength to our God for ever and ever. Amen.” (Apoc. 7:2-12)
From the rising of the sun. Vidi alterum angelum ascendentem ab ortu solis. St. Bede, in his commentary on the Apocalypse, follows the older Latin interpreters in reading this angel as Christ Himself. He comes from the east because He is the Orient from on high, the Dayspring of whom Zachary sang (Luke 1:78), the man whose name is Oriens (Zach. 6:12). He alone carries signum Dei vivi, the seal of the living God, because He alone can mark men as God’s own (Bede, Explanatio Apocalypsis I, on 7:2).
In their foreheads. The seal recalls a scene in Ezechiel. Before judgment falls on Jerusalem, a man clothed in linen goes through the city and marks a Thau on the foreheads of those who sigh and mourn for its abominations, and the destroyers are told to touch no one who bears the mark (Ezech. 9:4-6). The early Christians saw at once what that letter was. Tertullian notes that the Hebrew Thau was written in the form of a cross, the very sign which, he says, the prophet foresaw would be traced on our foreheads (Adversus Marcionem III.22). St. Cyprian gathers Ezechiel’s Thau, the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts, and the sealed of the Apocalypse into one testimony: salvation lies in the sign of the cross for all who are marked with it on the brow (Ad Quirinum II.22). Every Christian received that sign at the font and again at Confirmation, and renews it whenever he blesses himself. The saints are those in whom the seal was kept unbroken.
A hundred forty-four thousand. The number is twelve times twelve times a thousand: the twelve tribes multiplied by the twelve Apostles, and raised to fulness. The Fathers did not take it as a census. Bede, following the tradition of Tyconius, reads it as the perfection of the whole Church built on the faith of the Apostles (Explanatio Apocalypsis I, on 7:4). The list itself carries a warning. The tribe of Dan is missing. St. Irenaeus noticed this in the second century, and explained it by an old tradition that the Antichrist would arise from Dan, so that the tribe is not numbered among the saved (Adversus haereses V.30.2). Whatever we make of that tradition, the omission says something grave. To be born into the people of God is not yet to be sealed. A name can drop out of the list.
Which no man could number. Post hæc vidi turbam magnam, quam dinumerare nemo poterat. St. John first hears a number and then sees a multitude. Bede takes them as the same Church, described first in the measured terms of Israel’s tribes and then revealed in its true immensity, gathered from every nation (Explanatio Apocalypsis I, on 7:9). This is the verse that makes today’s Epistle the Epistle of All Saints. Heaven is not a small club of famous names. It is a crowd beyond counting, and most of its members appear in no calendar.
White robes and palms. The robes are white, the elder explains a few verses later, because “they have washed their robes, and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Apoc. 7:14). Their holiness is not their own manufacture. It is Christ’s blood applied to them. The palms are the sign of victory, carried by those who have come “out of great tribulation.” Nothing in their hands is a trophy of their own. Their song gives all the credit away: Salus Deo nostro, qui sedet super thronum, et Agno. “Salvation to our God, and to the Lamb.” This is why the Church’s honour paid to the saints can never become rivalry with God. The saints themselves are the first to refuse any glory that is not His.
They fell on their faces. The vision ends in adoration. The Angels, the ancients and the living creatures fall prostrate and pour out a sevenfold praise: benediction, glory, wisdom, thanksgiving, honour, power and strength. The Introit said that the Angels rejoice at the saints’ solemnity and praise the Son of God. Here we see them doing it. The communion of saints is a communion in worship.
II. Beati: the Gospel
“At that time: Jesus seeing the multitudes, went up into a mountain, and when he was set down, his disciples came unto him. And opening his mouth, he taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven.” (Matt. 5:1-12)
He went up into a mountain. St. Augustine opens his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount with this detail. The Old Law was given on a mountain to a people who had to be held in check by fear. The New Law is given on a mountain to a people set free by love. The height of the place, he says, signifies the higher precepts of justice that are now to be taught (De sermone Domini in monte I.1.2). St. John Chrysostom adds that Our Lord sat down, as a teacher does, and that He went up away from the crowd so that His disciples could come close to Him. The Beatitudes are spoken to those who draw near (Hom. in Matt. 15).
The poor in spirit. The first word of the New Law is about poverty. Chrysostom explains that the poor in spirit are the humble and contrite of heart, and that Our Lord begins here because humility is the foundation on which every other virtue must be built (Hom. in Matt. 15). St. Leo the Great makes the same point in his sermon on the Beatitudes. Christ does not simply bless those who lack money. He blesses a poverty of soul, the humility that is not captured by love of temporal things and that looks to God for everything (Sermo 95.2). This is the beatitude every saint shares. There are rich saints and poor saints, kings and beggars, but there are no proud ones.
The ladder of the Beatitudes. The Fathers saw an order in these sayings. St. Gregory of Nyssa compares them to the rungs of a ladder, each one lifting the soul a step higher toward God (De beatitudinibus, Oratio 1). St. Ambrose notes that St. Luke gives four beatitudes and St. Matthew eight, and argues that the eight are contained in the four and the four in the eight, since together they contain the cardinal virtues (Expositio in Lucam V). St. Augustine gives the most famous pattern. He matches the first seven beatitudes with the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost named by Isaias (Isa. 11:2-3), but in reverse order, climbing from the lowest gift to the highest. Fear of the Lord belongs to the poor in spirit. Piety belongs to the meek. Knowledge belongs to those who mourn, because they have learned the misery of their state. Fortitude belongs to those who hunger and thirst for justice. Counsel belongs to the merciful. Understanding belongs to the clean of heart, who shall see God. Wisdom belongs to the peacemakers, who are the children of God (De sermone Domini in monte I.4.11).
The eighth returns to the head. The eighth beatitude ends with the same promise as the first: quoniam ipsorum est regnum cælorum. Augustine observes that the eighth “returns to the head,” as an octave returns to its starting note. It does not add a new step. It shows that the whole ladder has been climbed, and it marks the one who has climbed it as perfect. Persecution is the test that proves the other seven are real (De sermone Domini in monte I.3.10, I.4.12). He also notes that the number eight suggests the eighth day, the day of the Resurrection. It is not a small thing that we hear this Gospel this year on a Sunday.
Your reward is very great. St. Thomas teaches that each beatitude names both a merit and a reward, and that the reward is begun even in this life, though it is completed only in heaven (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 69). The meek already begin to possess the land of their own souls. The clean of heart already begin to see God by faith. The saints are the proof that Our Lord’s promises were not figures of speech. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven” is not a metaphor for them now. It is their address.
III. The feast: from the Pantheon to the whole Church
The Church has honoured her martyrs since the second century, keeping their anniversaries at their tombs. As the number of martyrs grew beyond what any calendar could hold, the Churches began to keep one day for all of them together. The East did this first. St. Ephrem in Syria knew a common feast of the martyrs in the spring, and St. John Chrysostom preached at Antioch on a feast of all the martyrs of the whole world kept on the Sunday after Pentecost (Laudatio sanctorum omnium qui martyrium toto orbe passi sunt). The Byzantine Churches keep All Saints on that Sunday to this day, so that the feast follows directly on the descent of the Holy Ghost, whose first harvest the saints are.
In Rome the decisive moment came in the early seventh century. The Liber Pontificalis records that Pope St. Boniface IV received from the Emperor Phocas the Pantheon, the temple of all the pagan gods, and dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Martyrs. The building that had housed every false god became a church of all the true servants of the true God. Tradition then credits Pope Gregory III with dedicating an oratory in St. Peter’s to all the saints, and Pope Gregory IV with extending a feast of All Saints on 1 November throughout the Frankish realm in the ninth century, from which it spread to the whole West. The details of the later stages rest on chroniclers rather than papal acts, but the outline is secure: a feast of the martyrs grew into a feast of every saint, and a local Roman dedication became the feast of the universal Church.
IV. The Mass as a whole: sealed, blessed, and gathered home
St. Thomas teaches that all things go forth from God and return to Him. Today’s Mass shows that pattern completed in the saints.
The going forth. The Epistle begins with a sending: an angel rising from the east, carrying the seal of the living God. Christ goes out into a world under judgment and marks His own before the storm breaks. The Gospel shows how the seal takes shape in a human life. On the mountain the New Law is given, and it describes a way of living that the world calls failure: poverty, meekness, mourning, hunger, mercy, purity, peacemaking and persecution. The Gradual sings of the same way: Timete Dominum, omnes Sancti eius: quoniam nihil deest timentibus eum, “Fear the Lord, all ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him” (Ps. 33:10). The saints went out into the world carrying the Beatitudes, and the world treated them as the Gospel says it would.
The return. The Offertory gives the world’s verdict and God’s: Iustorum animæ in manu Dei sunt… visi sunt oculis insipientium mori: illi autem sunt in pace. “The souls of the just are in the hand of God… in the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: but they are in peace” (Wis. 3:1-3). The Epistle shows where they have gone. They stand before the throne in white, with palms in their hands, gathered from every nation. The Communion antiphon then gives us three of the Beatitudes again: Beati mundo corde… beati pacifici… beati qui persecutionem patiuntur propter iustitiam. It is sung at the moment we receive the Lamb whom the multitude adores. The Church puts the Beatitudes on our lips just as Christ comes to us, because He is the One who makes them possible.
The hinge is the commemorated Sunday. In the Epistle appointed for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost, St. Paul writes: Nostra autem conversatio in cælis est, “But our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). The saints are what that sentence looks like when it is fully true. A sermon long read in the Breviary for this feast, attributed to St. Bede, praises the Church as a mother crowned with the flowers of her children: red with the roses of the martyrs, white with the lilies of the virgins, so that she lacks neither kind of flower. St. Bernard, preaching on this feast, says that the saints have no need of our honours, and that our devotion adds nothing to them. Yet when he thinks of them, he confesses, he is set on fire with a great longing to share their company, and with a second longing, that Christ our life may appear to us as He appears to them (Sermo 2 in festo omnium sanctorum). That is the point of the feast. We do not honour the saints to flatter them. We honour them so that we will want to go where they are.
V. The Collects
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui nos omnium Sanctorum tuorum merita sub una tribuisti celebritate venerari: quæsumus; ut desideratam nobis tuæ propitiationis abundantiam, multiplicatis intercessoribus, largiaris.
“Almighty and everlasting God, who hast granted us to venerate the merits of all Thy saints in one solemnity: we beseech Thee, that, as our intercessors are multiplied, Thou wouldst bestow upon us the desired abundance of Thy propitiation.”
The Collect is built on the logic of the feast. One celebration, una celebritas, gathers all the saints, and so the Church asks for a gift in proportion: multiplicatis intercessoribus, with intercessors multiplied. If one saint’s prayer is powerful, the prayer of the whole multitude before the throne is more powerful still. The word propitiatio carries us back to the Lamb. The saints do not replace the sacrifice of Christ. They plead it with us, and their merits are themselves the fruit of His grace.
Absolve, quæsumus, Domine, tuorum delicta populorum: ut a peccatorum nexibus, quæ pro nostra fragilitate contraximus, tua benignitate liberemur.
“Absolve, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the offences of Thy people: that by Thy bounty we may be freed from the bonds of sin which through our frailty we have contracted.”
The Sunday Collect, said under the commemoration, brings us down to earth. The saints are in white robes. We are still bound by nexus peccatorum, the knots and chains our weakness has tied. The two prayers belong together. The first shows us the end; the second admits honestly where we stand. Every saint once prayed the second prayer before he could join in the song of the first.
VI. A word for practice
Examine. Which of the Beatitudes do I find hardest to believe? Do I secretly think that the meek are foolish, that mourning for sin is morbid, that mercy is weakness? Have I kept the seal of my Baptism and Confirmation clean, or has it been dimmed by sins I have not confessed? Do I think of holiness as something for a few famous souls, when the Epistle shows a multitude no man can number?
Do. Choose one beatitude and practise it deliberately this week. If it is mercy, forgive one injury without reminding the other person of it. If it is poverty of spirit, give away something you are attached to. Learn the name and story of one saint you have never heard of. Make a good confession before the end of the month, so that the seal on your forehead is bright.
Pray. Pray the Litany of the Saints slowly today, adding at the end the names of your patron saints and of any holy souls you have known. Tomorrow, on All Souls, pray for the faithful departed, visit a cemetery, and seek the indulgences the Church grants for them in these days, under the usual conditions.
Aspiration. Omnes Sancti et Sanctæ Dei, intercedite pro nobis. “All ye holy men and women of God, intercede for us.”
Devote. October, the month of the Holy Rosary, has just closed, and today opens November, the month of the Holy Souls. Pray the Glorious Mysteries, resting on the fifth, the Coronation of Our Lady as Queen of All Saints. Make the sign of the cross today with attention, remembering that it is the seal of the living God.
If you wish to go deeper: the Theology and Doctrine path takes up the communion of saints as taught in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, the theology of merit and intercession, and St. Augustine’s teaching on the Beatitudes and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. The Sacred Liturgy path studies the Mass Gaudeamus, the commemoration of a Sunday by a feast of the first class, and the movement from All Saints to All Souls. The Church History path follows the dedication of the Pantheon and the spread of the feast in the Carolingian West. The East-West thread compares the Roman feast of 1 November with the Byzantine All Saints on the Sunday after Pentecost. The Spiritual Practices path continues with the Litany of the Saints and the November devotions for the faithful departed.
Sources. Scripture is cited from the Douay-Rheims with the Vulgate. The Fathers and Doctors are given in paraphrase with their loci: Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem III.22; St. Cyprian, Ad Quirinum II.22; St. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses V.30.2; St. Gregory of Nyssa, De beatitudinibus, Oratio 1; St. Ambrose, Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam V; St. John Chrysostom, Homiliae in Matthaeum 15 and Laudatio sanctorum omnium qui martyrium toto orbe passi sunt; St. Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte I.1-4; St. Leo the Great, Sermo 95; St. Bede, Explanatio Apocalypsis I, and a sermon for this feast attributed to him; St. Bernard, Sermo 2 in festo omnium sanctorum; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 69. The dedication of the Pantheon follows the Liber Pontificalis; the later spread of the feast follows medieval chroniclers and is offered as strongly attested tradition.
Regina Sanctorum omnium, ora pro nobis.