SUNDAY, November 1 All Saints' Day

This glorious feast is as close to heaven as we are likely to get all year. Of course the principal feasts of our Lord's nativity, death, and resurrection are holy, as are other days on the calendar devoted to celebrations of Jesus' life. All of them are important, as are the major saint days.

But on this day we give thanks to God for the lives and witness of all the saints, known and unknown, the faithful who have passed from this world to the next. We honor ordinary men and women throughout Christian history who were simply like you and me. Flesh and blood, fragile and finite, each as heroic and unheroic as we are capable of being, yet each holding the promise that Christ Jesus bestowed on us in our baptism. Some were martyrs, some victims; others led exemplary lives of humility, sacrifice, and generosity; others were as ordinary as you can possibly imagine. But in every case they simply followed the Lord they loved, and loved others in his name.

O blessed communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine.

PRAY for the Diocese of Ughelli (Bendel, Nigeria)

Ps 24; Wisdom of Sol 3:1-9 or Isaiah 25:6-9; John 11:32-44