Mass readings for the Solemnity of All Saints, November 1, 2026
Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14Psalm 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6
First John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12a
On November 1 this year we celebrate not the Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time but the Solemnity of All Saints.
All Saints is an ancient feast born in the earliest age of the Church, in an age of persecution, of confessors and martyrs. In the West, we’ve celebrated this feast on November 1 since at least the eighth century; before then, it was celebrated in the spring.
Such saints, martyrs and confessors, were innumerable, you see, more than could be remembered or even named. On the feast of All Saints the Church celebrates every one of them. There really is not much more to it than that. At All Saints we rejoice in all those who bore witness to Christ, especially in those who “loved not their lives even unto death” (Rv 12:11).
But in this feast, we rejoice also in the truth of the Church, that she is also a communion of saints. The communion of saints, of course, in one sense, is simply synonymous with the Church; yet the term underlines the breadth of the Church. That is, as the Body of Christ, the Church’s members include all who believe in Christ whether living or dead, believers on earth and in heaven, even angels.
St. Augustine called it the “City of God.” The Missal on the Sunday of All Saints will call it “your city,” that is, God’s city, a city full of angels and saints and pilgrims like you and me. To this, of course, belongs the “great multitude,” which John saw, what “no one could count from every nation, race, people, and tongue” (Rv 7:9).
“Sion’s daughters! Sons of Jerusalem! All ye hosts of heavenly chivalry!” goes the ancient hymn. “O blest communion, fellowship divine!” goes another famous hymn. This is what we celebrate today, what is truest of all those who belong to Christ: that they belong to a Church that in fact includes heaven.
Which is the first lesson of All Saints, what Paul taught: that no matter what our citizenship on earth may be, our true citizenship transcends it. Because very simply, as he wrote, our “citizenship is in heaven” (Phil 3:20). All Saints reminds us that we belong to something bigger than our earthly families, our communities, our nations.
Which in turn points to the moral lesson of All Saints, the lesson of the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes, simply put, show forth the universal way of the saints, God’s invitation to happiness.
The clean of heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted for the sake of righteousness: These are what the saints look like. These are they who truly learned that their homeland was in heaven and who acted accordingly. That is, the saints don’t act like any other people in this world; rather, they act like those who’ve been changed by Jesus’ teaching found in the Sermon on the Mount.
Which brings us perhaps to the last lesson of All Saints, and that is the lesson about the seen and unseen nature of sanctity. “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed,” writes John (1 Jn 3:2). That is, what is truest about us is something not immediately visible; it must be revealed. But how?
The saints are people who believe in Christ and in the kingdom of heaven which Jesus inaugurated; the saints believe the Church opens into this kingdom. They believe it so fully that they live their lives first according to that law of that kingdom instead of the laws of the kingdoms of the earth. But living that way sometimes makes for conflict; and in such conflict, they are revealed to be saints.
Loving instead of hating, forgiving instead of cursing: The saints of God are revealed to be the children of God in their sacrifices which they unite to Christ’s sacrifice. For on the cross, you see, the son was revealed as well. And here we come to the deepest mystery of All Saints, how it invites us to discover ourselves in taking up our cross.
And that’s how we can become saints and not merely celebrate them. By seeing what made saints into saints, we see the path of our own sanctity. With a like faith and a like courage, open to sacrifice just like them, we too can become saints, those who on that glorious day will rise in bright array.
