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Christ Glorified in the Court of Heaven
Fra Angelico - 1428-30, Tempera on wood - National Gallery, London

"The glorious company of the apostles praise Thee.
The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise Thee.
The white-robed army of martyrs praise Thee.
All Thy saints and elect with one voice do acknowledge Thee,
O Blessed Trinity, one God!"

-- Feast of All Saints (November 1), Antiphon at Lauds. from the Te Deum

Prayers - Scripture Readings | Family Activities

Origin of All Saint's Day as a feast of the Church What makes this feast so important that the Church celebrates both the night before All Saints and the day after it?

The Church has always honored those early witnesses to the Christian faith who have died in the Lord. (The Greek word for "witness" is martyr.) During the first three hundred years Christians were serverly persecuted, often suffering torture and bloody death -- because they were faithful . They refused to deny Christ, even when this denial might have saved their own lives, or the lives of their children and families.

The early history of the Church is filled with stories of the heroic faith of these of witnesses to Christ's truth. The stories of these saints -- these baptized Christians of all ages and all states in life, whose fidelity and courage led to their sanctity or holiness -- have provided models for every other Christian throughout history.

Many of those especially holy people whose names and stories were known, the Church later canonized (that is, the Church formally recognized that the life of that person was without any doubt holy, or sanctified -- a "saint" who is an example for us.) The Church's calendar contains many saint's days, which Catholics observe at Mass -- some with special festivities.

But there were thousands and thousands of early Christian martyrs, the majority of whose names are known only to God -- and throughout the history of the Church there have been countless others who really are saints, who are with God in heaven, even if their names are not on the list of canonized saints.

In order to honor the memory -- and our own debt -- to these unnamed saints, and to recall their example, the Church dedicated a special feast day -- a sort of "memorial day" -- so that all living Christians would celebrate at a special Mass the lives and witness of those "who have died and gone before us into the presence of the Lord".

This feast that we know as All Saint's Day originated as a feast of All Martyrs, sometime in the 4th century. At first it was celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost. It came to be observed on May 13 when Pope St. Boniface IV (608-615) restored and rebuilt for use as a Christian church an ancient Roman temple which pagan Rome had dedicated to "all gods", the Pantheon. The pope re-buried the bones of many martyrs there, and dedicated this Church to the Mother of God and all the Holy Martyrs on May 13, 610.

About a hundred years later, Pope Gregory III (731-741) consecrated a new chapel in the basilica of St. Peter to all saints (not just to the martyrs) on November 1, and he fixed the anniversary of this dedication as the date of the feast.

A century after that, Pope Gregory IV (827-844) extended the celebration of All Saints to November 1 for the entire Church.

The vigil of this important feast, All Saint's Eve, Hallowe'en, was apparently observed as early as the feast itself.

Ever since then -- for more than a millennium -- the entire Church has celebrated the feast of All Saints on November 1st, and, of course, Hallowe'en on October 31.

It is a principal feast of the Catholic Church. It is a holy day of obligation, which means that all Catholics are to attend Mass on that day.

Prayers, Scripture Readings for All Saints Collect
Almighty ever-living God,
by whose gift we venerate in one celebration
the merits of all the Saints,
bestow on us, we pray,
through the prayers of so many intercessors,
an abundance of the reconciliation with you
for which we earnestly long.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. +Amen.

First Reading: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14
I, John, saw another angel ascend from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads." And I heard the number of the sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand sealed, out of every tribe of the sons of Israel.

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!" And all the angels stood round the throne and round the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen."

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, clothed in white robes, and whence have they come?" I said to him, "Sir, you know." And he said to me, "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Second Reading: 1 John 3:1-3
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And every one who thus hopes in Him purifies Himself as He is pure.

Gospel Reading:
When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain, and when He sat down His disciples came to Him. And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

"Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on My account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.

All Saints is a Holy Day of Obligation. The principal activity for every Catholic family today is to go to Mass -- together, if possible. (Note Liturgical Calendar) Other family activities:

• After school, read (re-read) to your children Saint John's vision of the Resurrection of the Saints that we heard at Mass today. It is from the Book of Revelation (or the Apocalypse), chapter 7:2-4, 9-14.
  
• Have them draw pictures of the descriptions it contains. Michelangelo's famous painting of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel was inspired by this scripture passage. Your refrigerator is not the Sistine Chapel, but it's a good place to display the kids' pictures!
  
• Talk (or read) to your children about the saints they are named for. If you don't already have a good "age-appropriate" book to read from, prepare in advance by looking up the saint on this web site, or by reading from, say, Butler's Lives of the Saints, and tell them the story in your own words.
  
• Have each child choose a favorite saint, and make a booklet of their own about the saint's life. See the saint pages on this web site.
  
• Help them focus on how this saint gave an example of unusual courage, or devotion, or dedication to others, and how we can learn from their example.
  
• Take the children to a religious goods shop and allow the children to look for a medal or small statue of their own patron saint, or another favorite saint, along with a prayer card for that saint to use for bed time prayers. Ask your parish priest to bless these images for the children. (They can give them to the priest themselves for the blessings.
  
• Teach children the great hymn For All the Saints (here from The Adoremus Hymnal).

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Copyright © 2000 by Helen Hull Hitchcock. Permission is hereby granted to print these pages for private use. For all other uses, permission must be requested.

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SOLEMNITY OF ALL SAINTS, POPE BENEDICT XVI
ANGELUS MESSAGE
St Peter's Square
Monday, November 1, 2010

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Solemnity of All Saints, which we celebrate today, invites us to raise our gaze to Heaven and to meditate on the fullness of the divine life which awaits us. “We are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be” (1 Jn 3:2): with these words the Apostle John assures us of the reality of our profound relation to God, as too, of the certainty of our destiny.

Like beloved children, therefore, we also receive the grace to support the trials of this earthly existence — the hunger and the thirst for justice, the misunderstandings, the persecutions (cf. Mt 5:3-11) — and, at the same time, we inherit what is promised in the Gospel Beatitudes: “promises resplendent with the new image of the world and of man inaugurated by Jesus” (Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Milan 2007, p. 72). The holiness, imprinted in us by Christ himself, is the goal of Christian life. Blessed Antonio Rosmini wrote: “The Word impressed himself in the souls of his disciples with his physical presence... with his words... he had given to his own this grace... with which the soul immediately perceives the Word” (Supernatural Anthropology, Rome, 1983, pp. 265-266). And we have a foretaste of the gift and the beauty of sanctity every time that we participate in the Eucharistic Liturgy, the communion with the “great multitude” of holy souls, which in Heaven eternally acclaim the salvation of God and of the Lamb (cf. Rev 7:9-10). “The lives of the Saints are not limited to their earthly biographies but also include their being and working in God after death. In the Saints one thing becomes clear: those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them” (Deus Caritas Est, n. 42).

Consoled by this communion of the great family of Saints, tomorrow we shall commemorate all the faithful departed. The Liturgy of 2 November and the pious exercise of visiting cemeteries reminds us that Christian death is part of the journey toward becoming like God and it will vanish when God will be all in all to everyone. The separation from earthly affection is certainly painful, but we should not fear it, because it, accompanied by the prayer and suffrage of the Church, it cannot break the profound bond that unites us to Christ. As was previously said, St Gregory of Nyssa affirms: “He who has created every thing in wisdom, has given this painful disposition as an instrument of liberation from evil and the possibility to participate in separated goods” (De Mortuis Oratio, IX, Leiden, 1967, p. 68).

Dear Friends, Eternity is not an “unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality” (Spe Salvi, n. 12). To the Virgin Mary, the sure guide to sanctity, we entrust our pilgrimage to our heavenly home, while invoking her motherly intercession for the eternal repose of all our brothers and sisters who have been laid to rest in the hope of resurrection.

© Copyright 2010 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Hallowe'en - a Christian holiday

All Souls Day - Prayers for the Dead

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Catholic Encyclopedia on All Saints Days

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