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November 1, 2006
All Saints Day: I believe in the communion of saints
William Wordsworth sighed that 'The world is too much with us.' We can rephrase it as 'the ghosts are too much with us.' Ghosts, scary movies, and the like marked the eve of the Hallow. Whereas, the Halo is the round ring around the saints--the glow about or the aura about the holy men and women who have shared the holiness of God. In fact, Halloween is "Halo eve"--that has metamorphosed into Halloween. Old timers recall when, as children, they would dress like saints of their choice, who served as their role model.
Surely this morning, the crazy world is returning back to normalcy. Whereas last night, there was pandemonium and it was acceptable for children to befriend ghosts and evil spirit that no longer scare them - something that the devil has effortlessly won in the hearts and minds of God's children. What is scary is that the world gets too comfortable with evil and the evil one, even camouflaged under the guise of fun.
The feast of All Saints is what a Church triumphant - the saints who were human like all of us, and yet embraced holiness in their own life's circumstances and have crowned it with their life or death for the Lord and for the faith. They have gone before us. They have won this spiritual warfare and been washed by the blood of the Lamb.
All Saints Day is a pointer to what we all ought to be, the epitome of holiness that we all need to strive after.
I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green;
they were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.
They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and his love made them strong;
and they followed the right for Jesus' sake
the whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
and there's not any reason, no, not the least,
why I shouldn't be one too.
They lived not only in ages past;
there are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, on the street, in the store,
in church, by the sea, in the house next door;
they are saints of God, whether rich or poor,
and I mean to be one too.
There are saints among us, in our church, work place, those who do what is right in the sight of the Lord, live following the dictates of the conscience. These are saints from the Church pilgrim that is still on pilgrimage till it triumphs over the spiritual warfare and joins the communion of saints.
The saints are people of flesh and bones who have walked and still walk the earth to a different drum beat - following the Lord's calling to holiness. Can we be saints today, by accomplishing whatever we do with utmost perfection?
Posted by frleo at November 1, 2006 7:35 AM
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