This Sunday the Holy Day of All Saints is celebrated, instead of the 31st Sunday in Ordinary time. Monday follows with the commemoration of the Faithful Departed. Commemorating the Dead goes way back in human history. Of course, Christians did not build pyramids, but already in the first century, they built small shrines at the places where martyrs died. As those numbers grew, masses for all the martyrs began to be celebrated. Next Bishops began authorizing veneration of other holy people, often clergy, recommended to them by the esteem with which they were held in local communities. And so a “communion of saints” grew until by the 1200’s, these two days were celebrated throughout the universal Church, one after the other. The difference between “saints” (Nov 1) and “faithful departed” (Nov 2) is that holy dead people have not been officially declared a saint for the universal Church through the process of canonization. Perhaps you’ve known an unofficial saint or two in your lifetime. These people are so helpful for us because they are contemporaries, people who face with Christian steadfastness the same kinds of struggles we ourselves have in our modern culture. So seeing how they lived encourages us to feel we can do that too. But faithfulness does not mean perfection. Like us, our departed faithful had personal flaws and made mistakes. In the Cathedral in Los Angeles, along the walls are woven tapestries of famous saints. But their woven faces are contemporary faces, average looking, sometimes lined, of varying ethnicity, faces like those you might meet in on the street. That’s done to connect us with the saints. We are the living faithful of today, who someday will be departed, now walking the walk with the Lord, with varying degrees of success. Give thanks today for holy people you have known, guides for your life.
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia; section of the the Communion of Saints mural at Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles.
The post November 1, All Saints, All the Faithful: a Sunday Scriptures blog first appeared on Sisters of the Precious Blood.