On the Solemnity of All Saints, Deacon Dave Etters reflects on how the saints inspire us to seek holiness and embrace God’s purification in our daily lives. Discover why overcoming sin and growing in grace prepares our souls for eternal life with God.
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All Saints Day. We look to them today not to give them honor, although we honor them. They need no honor from us.
They need no accolades from earth. But what they do for us, as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux said, clearly if we venerate their memory today, it serves us, not them. And he said, I feel inflamed by a tremendous yearning as we contemplate the saints and their greatness.
We should be filled with this, inflamed with this great yearning to go after God, to inspire us, to follow after them. Responsorial psalm today. Who can ascend the mountain of the Lord, or who may stand in his holy place? One whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean, who desires not what is vain.
What stands between us and our purification? Pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. They’re called the seven capital sins. And they are really the root bed of all sin.
And in the Divine Comedy, Dante gives us a picture of what it takes to be purified from these sins. At the top of the mount is a portrait of Adam and Eve, which represents the freedom from sin and the innocence and purity in the paradise of the Garden of Eden. And at the base of the mountain, as we go up from those tiers and we wind around the mountain, we arrive at that place as we leave the sins behind of pride, wrath, envy, all those.
We should do our Mount Purgatory here. This is where we should embrace it. Augustine wrote this, or it was actually a prayer of his.
He said, Lord, burn, cut, do not spare on this earth that you may spare in eternity. We have been called to purification by God. And we are freed and can ascend the summit of that mountain.
This week I was looking over a hymn, a very famous hymn that we sing, Now Thank We All Our God. And in the breviary, there is a different, a slightly different translation, the second verse of it, that struck me so deeply. And I’d like to read it to you just line by line, and if you could echo the lines as I do it, okay? Oh, may this gracious God through all our life be near us with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us, preserve us in his grace and guide us in distress and free us from all sin, fill heaven we possess.
And as we do that, as we leave this world, our purgatory could simply be a step up instead of a seven-story staircase winding up and up and up to the glory of his kingdom. God bless you.