Revelation 7:2-4.9-14: An immense crowd appeared in the vision, that no one could count, from every nation, race, people and language; Psalm 23: This is the group that come to your presence, Lord; 1 John 3:1-3: We will see God as he is; Matthew 5,1-12a: Be joyful and content, because your reward will be great in heaven.
by Marciano Santervás, Augustinian Recollect. Madrid, Spain.
On this day, the Christian people celebrate the solemnity of All Saints, a feast popular rooted in the hearts of all those who keep alive the flame of desire to achieve the fullness of life and happiness, the contemplation of Beauty, the encounter with the Light, the enjoyment of Goodness and Holiness, the joy of communion with God. The saints are those who have already passed from desire to happy possession and delight. The saints are the happy.
Several Holy Fathers have left us valuable comments on the beatitudes of deep spiritual sense, among them Saint Augustine, who in Sermon 53, before going ommenting on each of the beatitudes, he writes:
Saint Augustine, without denying that a certain happiness can be achieved in this world, true happiness refers to the afterlife, to heaven, and to achieve it, one must be and live what was expressed in the first part of the beatitudes: poor in spirit, meek, merciful, pure of heart… Augustine writes:
The text of the beatitudes and its message have always been of interest throughout time, not only to the Holy Fathers of the first centuries of the history of the Church. An almost current theologian, José María Cabodevilla (1928-2003), wrote in 1984 an extensive volume on the beatitudes that he titled “The forms of happiness are eight.”
Very close to our days, Pope Francis in the apostolic exhortation “Rejoice and And Be Glad” (2018), which has the subtitle “On the call to holiness in the today’s world”, after various considerations in which he encourages aspiring to the holiness and to consider it as affordable in the daily life of our lives, offers a commentary on the beatitudes of the gospel according to Saint Matthew, and there comes a moment in which he asks himself: “How does one go about being a good Christian?”, and adds:
It is Pope Francis who titles the chapter of the exhortation “Against the Current” the apostolic letter cited and justifies this title in his brief and clear comments when analyzing the current presentist and individualistic environment, the disbelief and materialism of our society, which influence everything and everyone so much, and which are the opposite pole of the spirit of the beatitudes. That is, the gospel of Jesus always meets difficulties for its acceptance; the same thing that happened to Jesus himself.
Whenever one approaches the beatitudes he perceives how Christ Jesus captured the longing for happiness or blessedness, which every human being harbors in his heart, but that he collides with the same human condition tending to value the present realities as if they were, if not the only ones, then the safe and reliable ones, which leads to the person to anesthetize the innate aspiration for complete and endless happiness, and to disdain the enjoyment of communion with God and the contemplation of divine beauty.
The festival of All Saints clearly presents us with the dialectic of “now”, But not yet”. We have the promise of happiness, but for now “be poor in spirit”, “be meek in heart”, etc. Hence the gift of hope that God made us in baptism – and continues to make us – must be revived and act so as not to renounce to the struggle that human existence entails and, even more so, Christian living. Only those who fight can emerge victorious in combat. Let us beg the help of the Lord.
