A Foretaste of Heaven 

When you hear the word “saints” in the Mass, what comes to mind? Do you think simply of all “holy people”? 

Revelation 7:2-14 makes us conscious that we habitually ignore the deep reality of the persons we deal with each day. We should see them now as we will see them in heaven. John shows them in an imaginary image as “standing before the throne and the Lamb, dressed in long white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.” Whatever sins we see in them now have disappeared: they have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” They have won the victory over everything they struggled against here on earth. This is their true reality as God sees them. They are “saints” in the making, and saints they will be forever. To ignore this is to ignore the mystery—the deepest truth—of their being and ours. That is why we celebrate the “Feast of All Saints.” 

1John 3:1-3 calls us to remember what we proclaim every time we pray “Our Father, who art in heaven….”  

See what love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called the children of God. Yet that in fact is what we are. 

The reason the “world” does not see us as divine is that “it never recognized the Son.” The “world” here might be the unenlightened part in Christians—perhaps ourselves—who say all the right words without hearing what they say. We call each other the “body of Christ” without recognizing Christ in others or feeling called to act like him ourselves. Those we call “sons and daughters of the Father in the Son,” we execute as criminals, slaughter in war, leave in intolerable economic conditions without proper housing, medical care, or even enough to eat. In these, we “do not recognize the Son.” Nor do we recognize him in ourselves, or we could not act—or fail to act—as we do.  

As stewards of his kingship, we are indeed responsible for acting in his name, and letting him act in us, to make things on earth the way he wants them to be: 

• an eternal and universal kingdom 

• a kingdom of truth and life, 

• a kingdom of holiness and grace, 

• a kingdom of justice, love and peace. 

The problem is that, though “we are God’s children now; what we shall be later has not yet come to light,” we treat each other as ordinary human beings. But when we deny the mystery in each other, we deny, on a fundamental level, the reality of our Faith. 

Matthew 5:1-12 gives us the worldview of those who believe they are divine, are called to act as divine, and will rejoice in divine life forever. To see things as Jesus describes them here is to see with the eyes of God. Our true eyes. 

Prayer Prompt: Think about people you tend to see as “different” from you for some reason. See them as “holy people”. That is, see them as “saints.” Pray about how this should make you act towards them. 

 — Fr. David M. Knight

View today’s Mass readings, Lectionary #667, on the USCCB website here

Fr. David M. Knight (1931-2021) was a priest of the Diocese of Memphis in Tennessee, a prolific writer, and a highly sought after confessor, spiritual director, and retreat master. He authored more than 40 books and hundreds of articles that focus primarily on lay spirituality and life-long spiritual growth.