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All Saints - A celebration that includes us.
We can justifiably read “All Saints” as pertaining to those who have finished this life so well that they are recognized by many people as being clearly worthy of inclusion in God’s eternal love. We might find it difficult to look upon all people, including ourselves, as “all saints. But that is God’s desire, who sees all of us as good and worthy of being loved. However, we have the freedom to deny the truth that we are good and that God loves us, and rather than loving ourselves and our neighbors, we can behave in ways that are incompatible with our essential goodness. We all have experience of this misuse of freedom and easily recognize it in our own words and actions and those of others. We also have personal experience of much goodness.
All Saints are proposed to us as models to be admired, and to be imitated more in the love with which they acted than in their behavior. Similarly, we know many living people, some public figures and some people in our immediate circles, whose goodness is apparent and attractive. We spontaneously want to be like them, not as clones, but with the loving attitude we so easily recognize in them. Like us, they are not “perfect,” but neither were those who have been officially recognized by Church authorities. Focusing on both God’s desire for our good and on our own desire for goodness leads us to entertain the meaningful thought of being among all saints.
Rather than questioning or doubting how we could somehow become recognized as especially good people, we move more fruitfully by finding joy in the ways we are called and invited by both circumstances and inspirations to express our love “in deeds more than in words” as St. Ignatius of Loyola urged upon all those whose lives he touched. Our trust is more about cooperating with God’s desire and intention that we freely exercise our capacity to love than on any plans, programs, or set of rules that we or others might devise.
The essence of goodness is love, the one thing most of want more than anything else. Our participation now among all saints relies first on our ongoing prayerful experience of God’s love for us. From there, we grow into just such a company of people by our decisions to love as we are loved. Sometimes this is easy, caring for those we spontaneously like. At other times we struggle with applying to our own words and actions the belief that God loves those with whom we do not easily identify. We might find helpful the saying that “God does not love anyone more than me but does not love anyone less than me.”
“All Saints” is not just about those of the past but is also an invitation and a truth for us now, that we become “all saints.”
Last Updated 10/31/2026