Homily for All Saints, Year A

Robes Washed White: The Crowd That Is Waiting for Us

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today the Church lifts our eyes to heaven and lets us glimpse the end of the story. In our first reading, Saint John is given a vision, and he tries to describe what he sees. First he hears a number: one hundred and forty-four thousand, twelve thousand from each tribe of Israel. It is a number of completeness, of God's people gathered whole. Then he turns, and he sees something even greater: "a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue."

Think about that for a moment. A crowd so large that even the beloved disciple, with heaven opened before him, could not count it. This feast is not only about the handful of saints whose statues stand in our churches, Francis and Thérèse, Joseph and Mary. It is about that uncountable multitude: mothers and fathers, farmers and nurses, children and grandparents, people whose names were never written in any book except the Book of Life. Some of them sat in pews like these. Some of them may have been in your own family.

Then one of the elders asks John a question: "Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?" John does not know, and the elder answers: "These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

Dear friends, that is a strange image. Anyone who has ever spilled something red on a white shirt knows that blood does not make anything white. It stains. Yet here is the whole Gospel in one picture. The saints are not people who never got dirty. They are people who let Christ wash them. Their robes are white not because of their own spotless record, but because they brought their stains to the Cross of Jesus, again and again, and let His mercy do what no human effort could do.

That is the first thing this feast wants us to know. Holiness is not first something we achieve. It is something we receive. The saints did not earn heaven by being impressive. They were washed, and they kept coming back to be washed.

Our second reading tells us why this is possible. Saint John writes: "See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are." Notice that last little phrase: "Yet so we are." It is not a hope or a reward for good behavior. In Baptism, you were made a child of God. That is already true of you this morning, whether you feel holy or not.

John continues: "Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." Here is the destiny of every person in this church. Not simply to be a little nicer, not simply to avoid trouble, but to see God face to face and, in seeing Him, to become like Him. The saints are those in whom that promise has already come true.

The Second Vatican Council put it plainly: "all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity." All of us. Holiness is not a career path for monks and nuns while the rest of us settle for less. It is the ordinary vocation of every baptized Christian. The saints are not the exception to the Christian life. They are what the Christian life looks like when it is finally allowed to bloom.

So what does that holiness look like here and now, before the white robes and the palm branches? Jesus answers in the Gospel. He goes up the mountain, sits down like a teacher, and gives us the Beatitudes: blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the clean of heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted.

The Catechism tells us something beautiful about these words. It says, "The Beatitudes depict the countenance of Jesus Christ and portray his charity." In other words, the Beatitudes are first a portrait of Jesus Himself. He is the poor one, the meek one, the merciful one, the peacemaker, the one persecuted for righteousness. When Jesus describes the blessed, He is describing His own face. And the saints are simply people whose faces, over time, came to resemble His.

Saint Augustine saw the Beatitudes as a kind of ladder, beginning with humility, poverty of spirit, and climbing step by step toward the peace of the children of God. That is encouraging, brothers and sisters. No one reaches the top in a single leap. The saints climbed one step at a time, often slipping, always getting back up.

And look at who Jesus calls blessed: those who mourn, those who are persecuted, those who hunger for a justice they do not yet see. These are not people who have it all together. The world would hardly call them fortunate. Yet Jesus says the Kingdom belongs to them. The elder in Revelation said the same thing: the saints "survived the time of great distress." Holiness does not mean escaping hardship. It means meeting it with Christ.

Some of you carry that distress right now: illness, grief, a broken relationship, worry for a child, the quiet ache of loneliness. Today's feast says to you: the saints walked this road too, and they are not far from you. They are cheering you on.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux preached on this very feast, and he said something striking. The saints, he said, have no need of honor from us; nothing we do adds to their glory. Why then do we celebrate them? Because, Bernard confessed, calling them to mind stirs up in us a longing to enjoy their company and to share their joy. We honor the saints not for their sake, but for ours, so that we will want what they have.

My friends, that is the real question of this day. Do we want it? Do we want to be saints? Not famous, not canonized, but holy, truly like Christ? It is easy to admire the saints from a distance. It is something else to desire to join them.

And here is the wonderful news: we are closer to them than we think. In a few moments, the priest will pray that we join our voices with the angels and all the saints as we sing, "Holy, Holy, Holy." That is not poetry. At every Mass, heaven and earth meet. The great multitude John saw worshiping the Lamb is worshiping the very same Lamb who becomes present on this altar. When we receive the Eucharist, we receive the Lamb whose blood washed the saints' robes white. Holy Communion is how ordinary people become saints, one Communion at a time.

So let me offer one simple step for this week. Choose one Beatitude, just one, and ask the Lord to let it become your own. Perhaps mercy toward someone who has hurt you. Perhaps peacemaking in a tense home. Perhaps poverty of spirit, admitting that you cannot do this alone. And if your robe feels stained, bring it to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. That is where robes are made white.

Brothers and sisters, the crowd that no one can count is not finished yet. There is room in it for you. Ask the saints, especially those you have loved and lost, to pray for you. And come now to the altar, to the Lamb, who alone makes saints. Amen.