From the Friars: Holy Reminders

This week on November 1st we celebrate the Solemnity of “All Saints’ Day”. It is an opportunity for us who are still in the fight (the Church Militant) to rejoice in the victory of our brothers and sisters who have persevered in bearing their crosses with patience and love to a heroic degree (the Church Triumphant).

It is also an opportunity to invoke our particular patron saints, beseeching their help and powerful intercession, for all the specific needs and intentions we hold in our hearts. The Catechism states that: “Being more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in heaven fix the whole Church more firmly in holiness… [T]hey do not cease to intercede with the Father for us…through…Jesus Christ…So by their fraternal concern is our weakness greatly helped”. (CCC 956) One of my favorite saints, Therese of Lisieux, once said that she wanted “to spend [her] heaven in doing good on earth”. How many roses have been received here below as proof of this!

Reflecting on the Creed in his book Credo for Today, Pope Benedict XVI writes: “One of the consequences of what we call man’s state of original sin is that (his) memory has become very dim, very pale, very erratic, ineffective, and vague. In the flood of images and information that presses in on us every day [God] is practically indiscernible. He has no meaning; He does not seem to be present or important in the real life of people.” Quoting St. Augustine he concludes that it is “through the saints [that] God reminds us of Himself”.

Indeed, especially today, we need such “reminders”, who through their lives of heroic virtue and holiness help us to perceive God’s mercy and love in the world. We need only gaze upon a photo of the disfigured face of St. Damian of Molokai, a Catholic priest who devoted his life to ministering to lepers and contracted the disease himself, or of Mother Teresa of Calcutta coddling an infirmed infant in her arms, for us to see the very face of God. “Christ comes to meet us through the saints, people who have lived on this remembrance and thereby have themselves become reminders of God. Losing the remembrance of God means forgetting life, Augustine once said… Hence the resurfacing of the remembrance of God… means that my being is set right again, sees the light again, comes back to itself, back to life.” Let us be grateful for such witnesses of our faith and try to imitate their lives as we implore their help. All you holy saints in heaven pray for us!

Let us also remember and pray for our brothers and sisters, who through the mercy of God, are undergoing purification in Purgatory (the Church Suffering) as we observe ‘All Souls Day’ on November 2nd. May Jesus Christ be praised!

–Br. Pio