From the Heart of the Shepherd
From the bulletin for The Solemnity of All Saints (2026 Nov 01)
November 1, 2026 - All Saints
Our parish’s patronal feast day is, of course, April 25, the Feast of Saint Mark. But if people can celebrate–or at least mark–their half-birthdays, then I think we can claim November 1 as our half-patronal feast day. (A close runner-up is August 10, the anniversary of the dedication of our parish church). Hear me out:
At St. Mark’s, we say our parish mission is to “live and share Christ’s call to holiness.” That is as succinctly as we can express the task of the Catholic Church in Merriam Park. In other words, we exist to worship God and proclaim the Good News. To “worship God” is understood in the full sense, offering our very bodies in spiritual worship (cf. Rom 12:1), praising God on the “ten-stringed lyre” that is the soul which fulfills His commands, and directing all that we are, have, and do towards His glory. That is what it means to be holy; to live out Christ’s invitation to be holy as He is holy.
But we also are here to extend that invitation to others, both to those who are near and to those who are still far off… even though they live in the shadow of the steeple! We share the Good News that God loves us so much that He wants us to “deliver us from the power of darkness and transfer us into the Kingdom of His beloved Son,” to be with Him forever in Heaven, be like Him for all the ages, “holy and blameless in His sight … sharing in the inheritance of the holy ones in light, immersed in His divine glory and beatifying love (cf. Col 1:13-22). To be sure, we proclaim that Very Good News with our silent witness: by faithfully going to Church on Sunday and joyfully lingering around after Mass; by diligently practicing virtue and abstaining from the vices of the world (or, at least tirelessly striving to surrender to Jesus’ will to finally deliver us from them); by generously committing ourselves to a spouse in service or to remaining single for the Lord; by fearlessly bringing children into this world, even while we keep our eyes fixed on the promise of the next. Yet we share “Christ’s call to holiness” all the more directly by our acts of merciful ministry towards those in need (proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who went about healing the sick and delivering those in bondage) and especially by daring to speak to others directly about the true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent us.
There are many ways a parish could condense all that essential activity into a pithy mission statement. We like our way, because it reminds us that we are all called to be saints!
The Solemnity of All Saints, therefore, is our solemnity. It’s our annual celebration of the “everymen and everywomen” of the Church of all the ages who responded to the call; those in whose lives the grace of Christ conquered over darkness and sin and even death itself. It’s also our annual reminder that, without discarding the possibility that we become canonized saints ourselves (who could deny that God is capable of pulling off such a feat, even in the life of a sinner like you or me?), we all ought to “at least” see in this Solemnity our “future feast day,” since only the Saints enter Heaven, and we are all aiming to land among those stars.
So I rejoice that this year All Saints falls on a Sunday. Though it’s one of those few feasts that, even outside of Sunday, we are all obliged to celebrate by attending Mass, I feel like we are more “together” on Sundays, as a family. I also rejoice that the Solemnity always kicks off the month of November which, at St. Mark’s, has long been dubbed the “Month of Mercy.” “Charity atones for a multitude of sins” (1 Pe 4:8), as do alms (Sir 3:30). If we make the most of the opportunities to help those in need that the parish will provide, as well as those that Providence strews upon our paths, we will make great strides towards sainthood in the coming weeks as we live and share His call.
Comments