The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs (Credit : Fra Angelico, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
All Saints Day honors martyrs who gave their lives for Christ and all saints who may not have an official feast day throughout the year. The day reminds us to be inspired by the saints and strive for sainthood.
Who are the Saints ?
Holy men and women – true friends of God – to whom the Church today invites us to turn our gaze, are men and women who were fascinated by this proposal, who decided to trod the path of the Beatitudes. They did this not because they were better than us, but simply because they “knew” that we are all children of God and they experienced precisely this. They knew they were “sinners who had been forgiven”: these are the Saints. They learned to know themselves and to direct their efforts toward God, toward themselves and toward others, knowing in their weakness how to trust in the divine Mercy.
Canonization process
Already by the end of the 2nd century, there is evidence that the saints were already being venerated. First, the holy martyrs, who were soon joined by the apostles, the official witnesses of the faith. After the great persecutions under Imperial Rome, other men and women who had lived heroic Christian lives gradually became the object of veneration as well. The first non-martyr to be venerated as a saint was Martin of Tours. Toward the end of the year 1000, due to the uncontrolled development of “saint making” and the “purchase” of relics, a process for canonization was developed which required evidence of miracles.
History of the feast
The earliest certain observance of a feast in honor of all the saints is an early fourth-century commemoration of “all the martyrs.” In the early seventh century, after successive waves of invaders plundered the catacombs, Pope Boniface IV gathered up some 28 wagon-loads of bones and reinterred them beneath the Pantheon, a Roman temple dedicated to all the gods. The pope rededicated the shrine as a Christian church.
The Solemnity of All Saints began in the East in the 4th century, and then spread elsewhere, being observed on different dates: on 13 May in Rome, on 1 November in England and Ireland beginning in the 8th century. The latter date was extended to the whole Catholic Church by Pope Gregory IV in the 9th century. The solemnity falls toward the end of the liturgical year, when the Church fixes its gaze on the last things.
Message of the feast
The saints encourage us to aim high, to look in the distance toward the goal and the prize that awaits us. They invite us not to resign ourselves before the difficulties we face each day because life will not only come to an end, but it also presents us with a goal – eternal union with God. Through this feast, the Church shows us the saints who are at our sides, friends of God and models of a blessed life who intercede for us, who encourage us to live this last part of the liturgical year with greater intensity.
- Article by Catholic Time Staff
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