All Saints
READING: Luke 6:20-31

All Saints: Held in  a Great Web of Holiness

There are few festivals in the Christian year more quietly revolutionary than All Saints’ Day. At first glance it may seem gentle and nostalgic –  a day for remembering heroes of faith, lighting candles for those we love, whispering names into the silence. Yet beneath that surface runs a radical current: the belief that holiness is not the possession of a few, but the shared breath of God’s people together.

All Saints time shatters the illusion that we can manage on our own. In a world that prizes independence and personal success, this day reminds us that identity is not a private achievement but a communal unfolding. We are not saved from one another; we are saved with one another.

The word saint in the New Testament never refers to a spiritual elite. It simply means “the holy ones” – ordinary people like you and me who have discovered that life only makes sense in relationship with God and one another. Holiness is not a heroic climb towards heaven but the discovery that God is already present, with us, in the bonds that join us together.

All Saints’ Day  invites us to see the Church not as a collection of individuals but as a living web of love and grace –  a communion that stretches across time, culture, and even faith boundaries. The saints are not distant figures trapped in stained glass; they are companions on the same journey, their lives intertwined with ours in God’s great story.

Much of modern spirituality speaks of “finding yourself.” The search can be noble, but it often ends in isolation – a self turned inward, endlessly curating its image. All Saints time refocuses this idea : you find peace, love and joy  by belonging. We discover who we are through relationship, through receiving and giving love, through being woven into the greater story of God’s people.

Francis of Assisi embodied this with disarming simplicity. He did not build holiness by withdrawing from the world but by recognising kinship  with all creation. Birds, lepers, wolves, and kings –  each became part of his circle of grace. His life whispers that holiness is relational energy: the capacity to live as if everything and everyone is connected. For Franciscans, All Saints’ Day celebrates not individual perfection but participation in the dance of creation.

That same spirit  and idea is expressed in the lyrics of Bill Withers’ song “Lean on Me.”

“Lean on me, when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.”

Here, dependence becomes gift, not weakness. The song names what this feast proclaims — that we are made whole not through independence but through mutual care. It is holiness in ordinary language: the sound of love and grace shared between neighbours, friends, and strangers alike.

When some church congratulations  say in the Creed, “we believe in the communion of saints,” we are affirming one of the most beautiful and inclusive ideas  of Christian faith. The communion of saints is not a club of the pure or the perfect. It is the interweaving of all life in divine love. It binds together the living and the dead, the seen and unseen, the joyful and the grieving. It is alive – a conversation across generations, an exchange of courage and memory.

On All Saints’ Day we reclaim this mystery as a call to interdependence. Holiness is not locked inside us ; it arises in the spaces between us –  in shared meals, mutual forgiveness, acts of justice, quiet compassion. The saints are mirrors of collective love and grace. They show that God’s Spirit is most tangible not in solitary triumphs and achievements but in communities that hold one another through darkness and joy.

Our gospel reading today makes this vision visible. Jesus blesses the poor, the hungry, the grieving, the despised . He doesn’t do it  as a moral lesson but as a revelation of where God’s life is most at work. These blessings are material, not metaphorical. They name the places where dependence is most visible – where we as people must lean on God and one another simply to survive.

And then in the same reading  come the list of woes –  to the rich, the full, the laughing, the respected. Not because joy or comfort are wrong, but because self-sufficiency blinds us to connection. To those who imagine they can live without others, Jesus speaks a loving warning: you are cutting yourselves off from life itself.

These  Beatitudes invite us to a land of love and grace where no one thrives alone. The saints are those who have learned this pattern – who know that joy grows when shared, that peace endures only through solidarity, that love expands when it crosses boundaries.

Luke’s version of the beatitudes in this reading ends with Jesus’ call to love our enemies. It is a difficult and challenging  saying and ideal to live up to , but in the context of All Saints time  it becomes deeply practical. The saints are not flawless moralists but people who have learned to keep love alive even in difficult and  hostile environments. To love one’s enemies does not mean accepting injustice or silencing pain; it means refusing to let hatred define our existence and lives.

Such love of our enemy is not sentimental. It is resistance to the cycle of violence, so much needed in our world and society today. It opens the door to transformation where revenge would only deepen the wound. And no one can do this alone. The strength to persevere in costly compassion comes from belonging to the communion of saints –  the living and the dead who surround us with prayer and example.

All Saints’ Day, then, is not about escaping the world into a spiritual elite but immersing ourselves more deeply in its shared life. It teaches that holiness is mutual dependence – the shared breath of those who draw life from the same Spirit.

We are saints together when we cook a meal for a neighbour, when we stand beside the marginalised, when we join our voices in lament and praise. We are saints when we accept our need for one another, and when we see that need as gift, not weakness.

To celebrate All Saints time is to refuse the myth of the solitary hero of stained glass windows and rediscover the holiness of community. It is to believe that heaven’s song already includes every faltering voice on earth, that the music of the saints is made richer by our participation.

Closing Reflection

Today we remember that holiness is not rare.

It breathes in our every act of kindness, every moment of courage, every quiet “yes” to love.

The communion of saints is the great web that holds us when we fall and rejoices when we rise.

All Saints’ Day is the feast of interrelatedness – a  celebration of the God who binds us together until each life, however small, becomes luminous in the company of all the others.

Photo Credit: Getty Images (Unsplash.com)