What is a saint? How do you define the term? Whom do you think of when you think of saints?

What good does it do to honor the saints? Bernard of Clairvaux posed this question to his brothers in the monastery on the Feast of All Saints. It certainly doesn’t give the saints anything they need or don’t already have in abundance in eternity to praise them here.

“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

In our tradition, those we celebrate today are the good, the innocent, the blessed whose lives have brought them to the eternity of heaven. There are many more of them than those listed in the canon of saints, but they are no less important. So the question today, All Saints Day, is who are those saints in our lives?

Through the sacrifice of God’s Son, Jesus, our sins are forgiven. We turn now to God for that forgiveness.

The beatitudes in Matthew mark the beginning of the first of the five great speeches or discourses on which this gospel is built.

Our community with the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from its fountain and head issues all grace and the life of the People of God itself.