The Sunday Sermon Archive

All Souls Day is Monday November 2. If you would like us to remember your departed loved ones at Mass on All Souls day, click on the donate button below and enter any size donation. Be sure to enter the names of those you would like remembered in the message box before you send your donaiton.

Dear Friend,

We of the Catholic Church are members of the Mystical Body of Christ and thus we the members of the Church militant must ever be aware of the other members of our family _ the Church suffering and the Church triumphant.

Today, we focus our attention upon the Church triumphant _ those members of our family (the Mystical Body of Christ) who are now rewarded with the eternal blessed happiness of the Beatific Vision in Heaven.

We are called upon to honor and praise them for their success. We likewise thank God for the great graces He has given to them. We celebrate this day to atone for our negligence in this matter. We must strive to make amends for the negligence in failing to properly honor the Saints on our calendars throughout the year and also to pay tribute to those who have not yet been canonized or enrolled upon our calendar.

In honoring the Saints we recall to our mind their heroic acts of virtue and are encouraged to follow their example; and practice virtue to this heroic degree.

The martyrs, doctors, confessors, virgins, and holy men and women, all call out to us from heaven and say to us: follow us, for we have followed our King. We came forth from God and lived in the world, but we were not of the world. We lived in and for God and in doing this we found happiness in time but most importantly in eternity. Where you now are we once were. Our lives show you that it can be done, if you will only listen to and follow Christ.

So here we find ourselves today recounting the lives of the many saints and rejoicing in their success, but of what use is this to us if we do not follow in their footsteps?

The greatest form of honor is imitation. To truly honor them is to strive to be like them. They show us in no uncertain terms the entire purpose of our existence. We were made for only one purpose _ to be eternally untied with God in Heaven. To reach this goal it is necessary that we pass a short trial period (This life is truly short compared to eternity.) In this trial we must successfully come to know, love and serve God. From our narrow minded myopic view this appears to be an impossible feat. It seems too difficult to truly put into practice Our Lord's invitation: "Take up your cross daily and come follow Me." So many in their childish self-centeredness cry out, but how can we? We are not gods. Jesus is God and He can do this, but we are nothing but miserable human beings.

All the saints in heaven prove just how foolish such ideas are. They have done it. They have lived in this world just like we are now doing. Many of them have lived lives that were much more difficult than anything we have or ever will face here on earth, and with the grace of God they succeeded.

With the grace of God we can do all things. We say this and we believe it, but we then make the excuse that perhaps it is God's fault the we do not have His grace and thus will be lost for eternity and there is nothing that we can do about it.

His grace is always there. "My grace is sufficient for thee." What is wanting is our willingness to cooperate with His grace. God blesses us with the daily crosses that we need so that we can imitate Him and follow Him, and He likewise gives us all the necessary graces that we need so that we can successfully do this.

The deficiency is in our weak wills. We must therefore cry out to God with all the faith, hope, and charity that we can muster, begging Him for strength in our wills.

We see that our family members in heaven have reached their goal and are calling forth to us here below. Let us hear their calls and consider their lives that they lived here on earth and their lives now in heaven. They know what it is like here and they can help us if we will only ask them to and allow them to.

If we wish to please these friends of ours in heaven we must strive with all our being to follow them. We must praise them with the sincerest praise _ a serious and true imitation of their lives of heroic virtue.

Franciscan Benefactor Seraph Subscription Vocations Have you remembered God?