NOVEMBER 1. THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS

 THE FEAST OF THE TRIUMPHANT CHURCH. - I saw a great crowd, which no one could count, from all nations and tribes and peoples and languages, who were standing before the throne and the Lamb, dressed in white robes and with palms in their hands and crying out with a powerful voice: Cheers to our God! Time has passed; it is the entire redeemed human lineage that stands before the eyes of the prophet of Patmos. The militant and miserable life of this world will come to an end one day. Our long-lost race will strengthen the choirs of pure spirits that Satan's rebellion once lessened; the faithful angels, joining in the gratitude of those rescued by the Lamb, will exclaim with us: Thanksgiving, honor, power and strength to our God for ever and ever. And this will be the end, as the Apostle says: the end of death and suffering; the end of history and its revolutions, which we will understand from now on. The ancient enemy, thrown into the abyss with his supporters, will only exist to witness his eternal defeat. The Son of Man, liberator of the world, will have handed over the command to God, his Father, supreme term of 'all creation and of all redemption: God will be all in all things. Long before Saint John, Isaiah sang: I have seen the Lord sitting on a high and sublime throne; the fringes of her dress filled the temple and the Seraphim cried out to one another: Holy, Holy, Holy the Lord of hosts; All the earth is full of his glory. The stripes of the divine dress here signify the elect, converted into ornament of the Word, splendor of the Father, because, being the head of the whole human race from the moment he married our nature, this wife is his glory, as He is the of God. The virtues of the saints are the only adornment of our nature; Wonderful ornament that, when it receives the last hand, will be an indication that the end of the centuries is coming. This feast is the most pressing announcement of the wedding of eternity; every year we celebrate in her the progress the wife makes in her preparations.

CONFIDENCE. - / Blessed are the guests at the marriage of the Lamb And happy also are we, who in baptism receive the nuptial garment of holy charity as a title for the banquet of heaven! Let us prepare, with our Mother the Church, for the ineffable destiny that love reserves for us. Our anxieties in this world tend to this end: work, struggles, sufferings suffered for the love of God, highlight with inestimable stripes the dress of grace that makes the elect. Blessed are those who mourn! Those whom the psalmist presents us wept, opening before us the furrow of his mortal career; his triumphant joy now reaches us, casting like a ray of anticipated glory over this valley of tears. Without waiting for death, the solemnity that we have begun gives us entrance through a holy hope into the mansion of light, where our parents followed Jesus. What trials will not seem light to us before the spectacle of eternal happiness in which the thorns of a day end! Tears shed on the newly opened graves, how is it possible that the happiness of loved ones who disappeared does not mix with your sadness a heavenly pleasure? Let us listen to the songs of liberation of those whose momentary separation makes us cry; small or large this is your party, as soon it will be ours. In this season when the frosts abound and the nights are longer, nature, shedding its last finery, it seems that it prepares the world for its exodus towards the eternal homeland. Let us sing, then, with the psalm: "I have rejoiced at what I have been told: we will go to the house of the Lord. Our feet still tread only in your courts, but we see that you do not cease in your growth, Jerusalem, city of peace, that you build yourself in harmony and love. The rise to you of the holy tribes is continued in praise; your thrones that are still empty, are filled. Be all good, O Jerusalem, for those who love you; power and abundance reign in your fortunate enclosure. Because of my friends and my brothers who are already your inhabitants, I put my pleasure in you; by the Lord our God, whose mansion you are, I placed in you all my wish".

HISTORY OF THE PARTY. - In the East we find the first vestiges of a festival in honor of the Martyrs. Saint John Chrysostom delivered a homily in his honor in the fourth century and, in the previous century, Saint Gregory Nicene celebrated solemnities next to their tombs. In 411, the Syriac calendar indicates to us the Commemoration of the Confessors on the sixth day of Easter week, and in 359, on May 13, in Edessa, the "memory of the martyrs of the whole world" is made. In the West, the Sacramentarians of the 5th and 6th centuries contain many Masses in honor of the holy martyrs that are celebrated without a fixed day. On May 13, 610, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the pagan temple of the Pantheon, transferred to it many relics and wanted it to be called from now on Sancta Maria ad Martyrs. The anniversary of this dedication continued to be celebrated with the intention of honoring all the martyrs in general. Gregory III would consecrate an oratory in the following century "to the Savior, to his holy Mother, to all the apostles, martyrs, confessors and other just deceased in the world." In 835 Gregory IV, wishing that the Roman feast of May 13 would be extended to the whole Church, asked the Emperor Ludovico Pio to promulgate an edict to that end and set it on the first day of November. It soon had its vigil and Sixtus IV, in the fifteenth century, also gave it an Octave for the whole Church.

MASS

 

 "In the calends of November there is the same fervor as in Christmas to attend the Sacrifice in honor of the Saints", say the ancient documents related to this day. cause of special joy for all and also an honor for Christian families? Holyly proud of those whose virtues were transmitted from generation to generation, the glory that these ancestors, unknown to the world, had in heaven, gave them in their opinion more nobility than any worldly honor. But the living faith of those times also saw in this feast an occasion to repair the voluntary or forced negligence that had been had during the year in the cult of the blessed ones inscribed in the public calendar.

The antiphon of the Introit sings the triumph of the Saints and invites us to joy. Joy, then, on earth, which continues to bear its fruit so magnificently! Joy among the Angels, who see the voids of their choirs being filled! Joy, says the verse, to all the blessed, to whom earth and heaven direct their songs!

INTROITE

 

Let us all rejoice in the Lord, as we celebrate this feast in honor of all the Saints: of whose solemnity the Angels rejoice, and together praise the Son of God. - Psalm: rejoice, you righteous, in the Lord: praise is convenient for the upright. J. Glory to the Father.

We sinners, those of us who are always in exile, must, above all, in any circumstance and at all festivals, be solicitous of God's mercy. Let us have firm hope today, since today so many intercessors ask for it for us. If the prayer of an inhabitant of heaven is powerful, what will not reach all of heaven?

COLLECTION

 

Omnipotent and everlasting God, who has granted us to venerate the merits of all your Saints on the same holiday: we begged that, multiplying the intercessors, you grant us the long-awaited abundance of your propitiation. Through our Lord Jesus Christ.

EPISTLE

Lection of the Book of the Apocalypse of the Ap. San Juan (Apoc., VII, 2-12).

 

In those days, behold, I, John, saw another Angel rise from the birth of the sun, who had the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four Angels who had been ordered to harm the earth and the sea, saying: Do not harm the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, until we point out the servants of God in their foreheads. And I heard the number of those appointed: one hundred and forty-four thousand appointed from all the tribes of the children of Israel. Of the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand marked. Of the tribe of Rubén, twelve thousand indicated. From the tribe of Gad, twelve thousand marked, From the tribe of Asher, twelve thousand marked. Of the Naphtali tribe, twelve thousand marked. Of the tribe of Manasseh, twelve thousand marked. From the tribe of Simeon, twelve thousand marked, "and from the tribe of Levi, twelve thousand marked. From the tribe of Issachar, twelve thousand marked. From the tribe of Zebulon, twelve thousand marked. From the tribe of Joseph, twelve thousand marked from the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand marked. After these, I saw a great crowd, which no one could count, of all peoples and tribes and peoples and languages, who stood before the throne and in the presence of the Lamb, dressed in white clothes, and with palms in their hands: and they cried out with a loud voice, saying: Hail to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb. And all the Angels were around the throne and the elders and the four animals: and they fell before the throne on their faces, and worshiped God, saying: Amen. Blessing and clarity and wisdom and thanksgiving and power and strength to our God for ever and ever. Amen

THE TWO REGISTRATIONS. —The Man-God, making use of Caesar Augustus, once registered the world for the days of his first coming; It was convenient that at the beginning of the redemption an account of the state of the world should be made in an official way. Now the time has come for another recount that has to record in the book of life the result of the works ordered to salvation. Saint Gregory wonders in one of the Christmas homilies: Why is this registration of the world done when the Lord is born, if not to make us understand that the one who had to register the elect in eternity came dressed in the flesh? But, since many were left out of the benefit of the first registration, which was extended to all men for the redemption of the Savior, as a definitive one was needed, which would separate the guilty from the universality of the preceding one. Let them be erased from the book of the living; his place is not among the righteous; thus, speaks the prophet king and the holy pope remembers him in the same place. Although completely given over to joy, the Church on this day thinks only of the chosen ones; and only of them is treated in the solemn account in which, as we have just seen, the annals of the human lineage will go. In fact, before God, they alone count; the reprobate is nothing more than the undoing of a world in which only holiness responds to the Creator's designs, at the price of infinite love. Let us learn to adapt our souls to the divine mold that has to make them conform to the image of the Only Begotten and seal us for the treasure of God. No one who avoids the sacred imprint will avoid that of the beast; The day the Angels close the eternal accounts, any coin that cannot be put into the divine asset will go itself to the furnace, where the slags will burn eternally.

Let us live, therefore, in the fear that the Gradual recommends to us: not that of the slave who only fears punishment, but the filial fear that fears nothing so much as displeasing Him, who comes to us all the goods and who deserves by his goodness all our love. Without losing any of their happiness, without diminishing their love, the angelic powers and all the blessed prostrate themselves in heaven with a holy trembling, before the august and tremendous Majesty.

GRADUAL

Fear the Lord, all his Saints: for those who fear him lack nothing. J. And those who seek the Lord will lack no good. Hallelujah hallelujah. J. Come to me, all of you who work and are loaded: and I will relieve you. Hallelujah.

 

GOSPEL

Continuation of the holy Gospel according to St. Matthew (Mt „V, 1-12).

At that time, when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountain and, having sat down, his disciples approached him, and, opening his mouth, he taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens. Blessed are the meek: for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those that weep, for they shall receive consolation. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be fed up. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they will see God. Blessed are the peaceable: for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for justice: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you, when they curse you, and persecute you, and say all evil against you, lying, for me: rejoice and rejoice, because your reward will be very great in heaven.

THE BEATITUDES. —Today the earth is so close to heaven that the same thought of happiness fills hearts. The Friend, the Spouse, comes to sit in the midst of his own and to speak of his happiness. Come to me, all of you who are tired and burdened, sang the verse of the Alleluia a moment ago, a happy echo of the homeland, although it reminded us of our exile. And immediately the Gospel shows the grace and kindness of our God and Savior. Let us listen to him how he teaches us the ways of holy hope, the worthy delights, guarantee and foretaste of the total happiness of heaven. God, on Sinai, keeping the Jew at a distance, had only precepts and death threats for him. How differently is the law of love promulgated on the top of that other mountain, where the Son of God sat! The eight Beatitudes have at the beginning of the New Testament occupied the place that, as a prologue to the Old, occupied the Decalogue engraved in stone. It is not that the Beatitudes suppress the commandments; but his superabundant justice goes beyond all prescriptions. Jesus from his Heart made them to imprint them on the heart of his people and not on the rock. They are all a portrait of the Son of Man, the summary of his redemptive life. See, then, and act according to the pattern that has been set before you on the mountain. Poverty was certainly the first note of the God of Bethlehem; and who presented himself more 'meek than the Son of Mary? Who wept for nobler causes in the manger where he was already atoning for our sins and appeasing his Father? Where will those who hunger for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peaceful, find, if not in Him, the incomparable exemplar, never achieved, always imitable? Even death, which makes the august captain of those persecuted by justice, is the supreme beatitude in this world; In her, the incarnated Wisdom is pleased more than in any other, she speaks insistently about her, describes her in detail, until today she ends with it as in a song of ecstasy: The Church had no other ideal; Following the Bridegroom, his history in the various ages was nothing more than the prolonged echo of the Beatitudes. Let us also understand it; For the happiness of our life on earth waiting for that of heaven, let us follow the Lord and the Church. The evangelical Beatitudes make man overcome torments and even death itself, which does not take away peace from the just, before consuming it. This is precisely what the Offertory sings, taken from the Book of Wisdom.

OFFERTORY

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and the torment of malice will not touch them: in the eyes of fools they seemed to die: but they are in peace, hallelujah.

The Sacrifice that we have the joy of attending, says the Secret that gives glory to God, honors the Saints and wins us divine favor.

SECRET

We offer you, Lord, these gifts of our devotion: which may be pleasing to you in honor of all the Righteous and, by your mercy, healthy to us. Through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Antiphon of Communion is an echo of the evangelical lesson, but, not being able to enumerate again the complete series of the Beatitudes, it recalls the last three and rightly relates all of them to the divine Sacrament from which they are nourished.

COMMUNION

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God: blessed are the peaceable, for they will be called children of God: blessed are those who are persecuted for justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The Church asks in the Post-Communion that this feast of All Saints have the result of making her children honor them assiduously, to always benefit from their power close to God.

POST-COMMUNION

 We beg you, Lord, grant your faithful peoples the grace to always rejoice with the veneration of all the Saints: and to be protected with their perpetual intercession. Through our Lord Jesus Christ.