Solemnity of All Saints
Massimo Palombella
Celebrating today’s feast means giving ourselves time to reflect on the real quality of our lives. Indeed, ‘holiness’ represents a journey towards the fullness of humanity, a journey that Jesus traces clearly in today’s Gospel (Mt 5:1-12a), the Beatitudes. To be poor, meek, hungry and thirsty for justice, merciful, pure in heart… All this represents a precise choice in our lives, a slow conversion of how we read, judge and act before reality. ‘Holiness’ is then not just a laborious building of a future of happiness, of fullness that we will enjoy, perhaps after death, but already now beginning to live in happiness and fullness through our concrete everyday choices.
The Offertory antiphon for today’s celebration is taken from the book of Wisdom (Wis 3:1. 2 .3) with the following text:
“Justorum animae in manu Dei sunt, et non tanget illos tormentum malitiæ.
Visi sunt oculis insipientium mori; illi autem sunt in pace.”
(The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no malicious torment will ever touch them;
in the eyes of the unwise, they seem to have died; but they are dwelling in peace).
The accompanying music, in Gregorian Chant, is taken from the Graduale Triplex published in Solesmes in 1979. Interpretation: The Benedictine Monks of St. Pierre .
A blessed Sunday and heartfelt greetings.
