Transcript of Abbot Clements All Saint= s Day Homily November 1, 2007

It= s very important when we are on the journey that we prepare well. People have gone on vacations and they share that experience with others. For instance, they have gone Rome and they= re sharing it and here= s another person that went to Rome and they say, A Man, I didn= t even see that stuff!@ A I missed it!@

Well in our lives the danger is that we will miss the significance of the tremendous graces that we are embraced with and surrounded by. The constant availability for us to hear scripture and to hear the teachings of the church and the church fathers can make us dull and not open and also blind and miss the nearness of God.

Jesus started an invasion of God into the human race. He started it by his own life and every hour he certainly lived a life of love, self-sacrifice and uninteruptedly. So hour by hour from the time of his Incarnation he started a whole chain of love which Mary, of course, joined and then when he died on the cross he poured out his Spirit upon the world especially on the church so that this chain of love would be continued and that= s what we see and that= s what we are celebrating today. All these people have learned to be open to the Spirit and live by the Spirit in love. So they have blossomed and become what God has called them to be.

We have the danger because first of all the culture impacts itself on us and one of the difficulties we have is we live in a scientific mentality and we don= t know how to use symbols very well and also our faith is undercut because we live in a culture that says that I believe what I see and what I experience. So we can miss many things as a result.

For instance, even our Roman Rite for the Offetory especially when we have daily Mass the server, who ever it is, picks up the tray brings the chalice and the host to the altar and the priest performs the rite of offering the bread and wine. But that= s a tremendously rich action. It is the whole church offering itself in union with Jesus to the Father and to receive all kinds of graces as it moves toward the consecration and communion. The reason why it= s diminished in our rite is that over the years things have been dropped. Secondly, the culture doesn= t help us to see the significance of raising these gifts to God. So you have to go to the history of the rite or you can go to the Eastern Rite and see what they do and you begin to realize how rich this particular action is. For instance, in the Eastern Rite they have the Preparation Rite. In the Preparation Rite the host is sketched with the stylus so that it represents Christ, the Lamb of God, the Blessed Mother, the whole church is offered. Our host doesn= t even have a Chi-rho on it. Which means the consciousness is diminished. When the consciousness is diminished, the meaning is diminished, and therefore how can you make full participation in this mystery. Because the participation is really to join this movement. Yet that movement and joining it is precisely what is in line with Jesus= whole movement toward the Father every hour of his life and starting this chain of love that goes down through the centuries through the lives of the Saints which we join. So we could miss all this. It= s very possible.

We have to ask ourselves how do we grow in our participation in the action God has taken in our life, which is quite close to us. Not only in the Lectio Divina but also especially in the Eucharist every day where we can offer ourselves with Jesus and not only be acceptable to God for ourselves but for the whole world. In the process there should be not only the offering but the increased desire to do this especially for God= s intentions namely for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

So the feast of All Saints tells us what our goal is. It= s to become people who like Jesus learn how to love and because of that they become fruitful sources of love and transformation to others.