First Sunday after Pentecost - All Saints
Heb 11:33-12:2
Matt 10:32-33,37-38;19:27-30
This morning, I was reading in the Epistle to the Romans, the selection appointed for the Saturday after Pentecost, the Saturday before All Saints. It hit me in the face.
“To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints”.
Each of us is called to be a saint! It’s right there in the reading from Hebrews. After talking about all those Old Testament saints, the good they enjoyed and the difficulties they endured, Paul tells us that God had foreseen something better for us. He then urges us to “rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus”.
Yes, we are all called to be saints. In our Gospel today, our Lord gives us three easily remembered principles. Easily remembered, but not always easily accomplished.
Take up your cross. Today, when we think of the cross, we visualize the instrument of our salvation. But, when Jesus spoke these words, that was not what the apostles would’ve envisioned. The cross was a Roman instrument of torture and execution.
To take up one’s cross means to accept the torture and possible martyrdom that may come our way. As Paul writes in Hebrews, “Some were tortured and would not accept deliverance, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others endured mockery, scourging, even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, sawed in two, put to death at sword’s point; they went about in skins of sheep or goats, needy, afflicted, tormented”.
Today, our individual crosses probably won’t be quite so difficult.
It’s not uncommon today to be mocked for our beliefs. Those crosses are easy ones - just irritation. Some crosses may be harder, though. Imagine the crosses many of our clergy had to bear during the Soviet years - imprisoned, tortured, and sent to gulags.
Would we have done well in France during the first few years after the Revolution? During the Reign of Terror, the two-year period after the French Revolution, there were episodes of anti-clericalism. It was some of the most violent years of any in modern European history. The new revolutionary authorities suppressed the Church, abolished the Catholic monarchy, nationalized Church property, exiled 30,000 priests, and killed hundreds more.
Taking up your cross may not always be easy.
The second principle is loving God above everyone else. Our Lord shows us what we have to be willing to sacrifice for Him. “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”. He’s not telling us to hate our parents, of course, but to love him more.
Take the case of a young man. This man has a call to the priesthood. His father opposes that call and informs his son that, if he follows his vocation, he will be disinherited. Though he still loves his father, the son follows God, not his father.
Or consider a daughter whose Protestant parents oppose her becoming Catholic and subsequently entering a convent. Should she honor her parents’ wishes, or should she follow God?
Loving God is not necessarily easy, and it can be costly.
The last principle, acknowledging Christ so that He would acknowledge you to the Father - that one is, in many ways, the most difficult of the bunch.
Our society today is increasingly built around denying Christ in one way or the other. Remember, He tells us that He is the Truth. And Paul wrote to the Corinthians that we must have the mind of Christ.
In the early years of the Church, there was a heresy called Gnosticism. Part of what it taught was that our bodies were not important. The body was just a temporary shell for the soul.
That lie has reared its head again in recent years. There are people who suggest that you can change your gender. Some even say that there are more than just two genders. But, our faith tells us that “God created them, male and female”. Who we are is partially a result of how God created us, male and female. Our gender is written in our genes, and that cannot be changed. To say that God made a mistake in creating us male or female, or to say that the body is just a shell - how are those things acknowledging Him?
A few centuries back, people would say that blacks were inferior - for whatever reason. But our faith has always told us that black and whites have a common ancestry. And, in recent years, the science of genetics has shown that.
Denial of either of these is an implicit denial of Christ, because it is a denial of Truth.
Of course, there are more explicit denials as well. Some deny the divinity of Christ. Peter denied knowing him. Some acknowledge Christ, but then turn around and say that they will worship him the way THEY want, ignoring that the Holy Spirit has led the Church into the traditional forms of worship.
Our Lord doesn’t expect us to know everything - He IS infinite, after all, and His Truth is infinite. But he DOES expect us to follow Him, to acknowledge Him, according to the light we’ve been given.
As our second prokeimenon says, “God is wondrous in His saints, the God of Israel”.
Be a saint. Be part of God’s wonderment.
Yes, we are all called to be saints. In our Gospel today, our Lord gives us three easily remembered principles. Easily remembered, but not always easily accomplished.
- Acknowledge Him before men to be acknowledged by Him before the Father
- Love him above everyone else
- Take up your cross.
Take up your cross. Today, when we think of the cross, we visualize the instrument of our salvation. But, when Jesus spoke these words, that was not what the apostles would’ve envisioned. The cross was a Roman instrument of torture and execution.
To take up one’s cross means to accept the torture and possible martyrdom that may come our way. As Paul writes in Hebrews, “Some were tortured and would not accept deliverance, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others endured mockery, scourging, even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, sawed in two, put to death at sword’s point; they went about in skins of sheep or goats, needy, afflicted, tormented”.
Today, our individual crosses probably won’t be quite so difficult.
It’s not uncommon today to be mocked for our beliefs. Those crosses are easy ones - just irritation. Some crosses may be harder, though. Imagine the crosses many of our clergy had to bear during the Soviet years - imprisoned, tortured, and sent to gulags.
Would we have done well in France during the first few years after the Revolution? During the Reign of Terror, the two-year period after the French Revolution, there were episodes of anti-clericalism. It was some of the most violent years of any in modern European history. The new revolutionary authorities suppressed the Church, abolished the Catholic monarchy, nationalized Church property, exiled 30,000 priests, and killed hundreds more.
Taking up your cross may not always be easy.
The second principle is loving God above everyone else. Our Lord shows us what we have to be willing to sacrifice for Him. “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”. He’s not telling us to hate our parents, of course, but to love him more.
Take the case of a young man. This man has a call to the priesthood. His father opposes that call and informs his son that, if he follows his vocation, he will be disinherited. Though he still loves his father, the son follows God, not his father.
Or consider a daughter whose Protestant parents oppose her becoming Catholic and subsequently entering a convent. Should she honor her parents’ wishes, or should she follow God?
Loving God is not necessarily easy, and it can be costly.
The last principle, acknowledging Christ so that He would acknowledge you to the Father - that one is, in many ways, the most difficult of the bunch.
Our society today is increasingly built around denying Christ in one way or the other. Remember, He tells us that He is the Truth. And Paul wrote to the Corinthians that we must have the mind of Christ.
In the early years of the Church, there was a heresy called Gnosticism. Part of what it taught was that our bodies were not important. The body was just a temporary shell for the soul.
That lie has reared its head again in recent years. There are people who suggest that you can change your gender. Some even say that there are more than just two genders. But, our faith tells us that “God created them, male and female”. Who we are is partially a result of how God created us, male and female. Our gender is written in our genes, and that cannot be changed. To say that God made a mistake in creating us male or female, or to say that the body is just a shell - how are those things acknowledging Him?
A few centuries back, people would say that blacks were inferior - for whatever reason. But our faith has always told us that black and whites have a common ancestry. And, in recent years, the science of genetics has shown that.
Denial of either of these is an implicit denial of Christ, because it is a denial of Truth.
Of course, there are more explicit denials as well. Some deny the divinity of Christ. Peter denied knowing him. Some acknowledge Christ, but then turn around and say that they will worship him the way THEY want, ignoring that the Holy Spirit has led the Church into the traditional forms of worship.
Our Lord doesn’t expect us to know everything - He IS infinite, after all, and His Truth is infinite. But he DOES expect us to follow Him, to acknowledge Him, according to the light we’ve been given.
As our second prokeimenon says, “God is wondrous in His saints, the God of Israel”.
Be a saint. Be part of God’s wonderment.
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