Ask the angels and the saints to intercede for you,
just as you’d ask people who are alive.
Stand face to face with them,
in the belief that they’re also
standing face to face with you.
just as you’d ask people who are alive.
Stand face to face with them,
in the belief that they’re also
standing face to face with you.
--St. John of Kronstadt
Saints are imperfect people. And this is what draws me to this day. Christians don’t remember these men and women because they were perfect. We remember them because, like us, they were broken, selfish and fearful, yet God wrought beauty and light through their lives.
All Saints’ Day reminds me that God meets us, saints and sinners, despite our contradictions, and makes good out of haphazard lives. It tells me that all of us, even the best of us, are in need of unimaginable mercy and forgiveness. The church is “first and foremost, a community of forgiven sinners,” writes the theologian Gilbert Meilaender. It is not “a community that embodies the practices of perfection” but instead “a body of believers who still live ‘in the flesh,’ who are still part of the world, suffering the transformations effected by God’s grace on its pilgrim way.” Recalling the stories of saints is, in the end, a celebration not of perfection but of grace.
--Tish Harrison Warren
Today is the Solemnity of All Saints!
Celebrate by reading about
the life of your favorite saint!
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