Homily for All Saints – 1 November 2026
A little over a month ago, on 25 September, Pope Leo XIV met some 80,000 young people in the national stadium in Paris. Part of that evening was a great pageant in which young actors depicted the saints of France down the centuries, from St Martin of Tours and St Joan of Arc to St Thérèse of Lisieux and St Charles de Foucauld. The most moving moment came at the very end, when the whole procession of saints had gathered in front of the stage. The first saints stood at the back. In front of them, the next generation. Then the next. And right at the front stood young people: the youth of France today. Every saint had their hands on the shoulders of the one in front of them, so that a living chain extended from the first centuries of the Church right down to those young people. It was a picture of faith being passed on from generation to generation, and in every generation producing new saints. And those young people at the front were not standing alone: they were held up by all who had gone before them, supported, encouraged and carried forward by their prayer and intercession. That night Pope Leo said to the young people: “You are the saints of France!”
It is a beautiful image for this feast. We celebrate the all the canonised saints whose names we know, and the countless men and women who have reached heaven without being individually recognised by the Church. They are the ones standing behind us with their hands on our shoulders. They may include our own mothers, fathers, grandparents or other loved ones; people who we have known and loved in this life, and who passed the faith on to us. Their lives may not always have been perfect, yet even amid their faults and failings they kept moving forward, allowing God to make them holy.
The first reading, from the Book of Revelation, gives us a snapshot of the life of heaven with all the saints. In this vision there is a great multitude of people from every nation, tribe and language. They are dressed in white robes, participating in a heavenly liturgy, giving praise and worship to God. That is where the procession is heading, and we are called to join in that heavenly liturgy. Our Eucharist here today is both a foretaste of it and a preparation for it. The Eucharist is the food of saints.
The same raw humanity as the saints
Notice who stood at the front of that procession in the Paris stadium. Not the great saints of history, but ordinary young people of today. What comes to mind for you when you think of the saints? Do you think of some heroic men or women, far removed from your own experience and situation? The danger is that we might think we have very little in common with the saints, or even worse, that we could never be like them.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We are made of the same raw humanity as the saints. When we celebrate this feast of All Saints, we are celebrating our own destiny. This feast tells us that the Christian life is possible, because many have lived it successfully. To paraphrase the encouragement St Augustine describes in his Confessions: if they could do it, why not me too? The purpose of this celebration is to awaken in the depths of our hearts the desire to become saints. Let’s decide here and now, today, that we want to become saints.
A saint is someone who is holy. And we are all called to holiness, without exception: every man, woman and child, young and old. Holiness is the purpose of our creation and existence, because we were made for an eternal love relationship with God. The greatest tragedy for us would be not to become saints. The Lord wants us to be saints and not to settle for a bland and mediocre existence.
We are God’s children already
The second reading, from the First Letter of St John, speaks of the present and the future. Twice St John tells us that we are God’s children already. What we shall be has not yet been revealed, but we know that we shall be like Jesus. To be like him, we must purify ourselves as he is pure. In other words, we must strive for holiness.
Little things with great love
How do we become saints? We become saints through being faithful to God in the very ordinary circumstances of life in which we find ourselves. At any given moment we can do little things with great love. The sacraments, reading the Scriptures, our prayer and our worship, are all holy-making activities. Being part of the Christian community is a profound help in our quest for holiness. None of us becomes a saint on our own; we are part of that long procession, with the hands of those who have gone before us on our shoulders.
Every sinner has a future
There are two possible pitfalls in our quest to become saints. The first is to think that it is entirely up to us whether we become saints or not. In reality, God is the one who makes us holy; all we have to do is cooperate. As Pope Francis once said in Lent, “This Lent, give God permission to make you into a saint.”
The second pitfall would be to think that it is too late for us to become saints; that our track record excludes us. In truth, as they say, “every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” It is never too late for us to allow God to make us into saints.
The identity card of the saints
The Gospel, in the Beatitudes, gives us a programme for holiness. The Beatitudes are the identity card of the saints, and they are meant to be our identity card as Christians who are saints in the making. These Beatitudes challenge our selfishness, our complacency, and our pride. This teaching of Jesus should unsettle us and demand a real change in the way we live our lives.
In and of ourselves we are poor in spirit, and we need God. Saints mourn in that they have compassion for those who suffer. The call to be meek is the opposite of pride and vanity. Saints desire and work for justice for the poor and the weak; they speak for those who have no voice. Saints are merciful; having experienced God’s mercy, they forgive and understand the weaknesses of others. Saints have pure hearts, hearts that are undivided. Saints are peacemakers. And saints embrace the path of the Gospel daily, even when it brings persecution.
This is a demanding calling, and at times it may feel daunting or even overwhelming. But let us not despair or give up: the power of the Holy Spirit enables us to live it. Pope Francis said that when we feel the temptation to dwell on our own weakness, we should raise our eyes to Christ crucified and say: “Lord, I am a poor sinner, but you can work the miracle of making me a little bit better.”
We do not walk this path alone
And remember the image of that procession. We do not walk this path alone. Behind us stands that great cloud of witnesses as the Letter to the Hebrews calls them: the great saints and the hidden ones, all with their hands on our shoulders, praying for us, encouraging us and assuring us that it is possible. One day it will be our turn to place our hands on the shoulders of those who come after us. Today we can make Pope Leo’s words our own: we are the saints of Sea Point and Camps Bay. We are the saints of Cape Town. Let us give God permission to make it true.
