By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily while celebrating a Mass for the feast of All Saints with students and faculty at Cardinal Gibbons High School in Fort Lauderdale, Nov. 1, 2024.
Today’s Gospel reading is a taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We find this Sermon in the fifth and six chapters of the Gospel according to Matthew. I would encourage you to open your bibles and prayerfully read these two chapters of Matthew in one sitting – just to better appreciate its beauty, its impact, and its challenge to each one of us.
These teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount are as important to us Christians as are the teachings of Moses for the Jews when he came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments. Both Moses and Jesus “lay down the law” telling us what it means to be a member of God’s people.
Baptism has made us children of God and citizens of the Kingdom of God. If earthly kingdoms have their constitutions or “Magna Cartas” so too then does the Kingdom of God. We could say that the Sermon on the Mount is the constitution of those who aspire to be citizens of the Kingdom of God according to the New Covenant, the New Testament Jesus seals with his blood.
A nation’s constitution spells out the citizens’ rights and duties. For example, the American constitution tells us that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But it also insists that we also as citizens have duties – the duty to pay taxes and, if called to, the duty to take up arms to defend our nation.
Likewise, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, as the new Moses, tells us that as citizens of God’s kingdom through baptism, we also have rights: We have a right to the Kingdom of Heaven. As Jesus says, yours is the Kingdom of Heaven. We also have the right to be comforted, to have our thirst for righteousness satisfied, to receive mercy, to be called children of God. But rights do not come without duties. And thus, to follow Jesus and to inherit the Kingdom, we must be peacemakers, we must be meek, we must thirst and hunger for justice, we must be clean of heart, and we must be ready to endure insult and persecution. These beatitudes are this constitution’s preamble. The beatitudes spell out the attitudes that must characterize our life in Christ if we wish to be happy, to be blessed.
The world tells us that it is good to be important – and so people seek to make their lives meaningful and happy by running after pleasure, power, and plunder. Jesus is telling us in his Sermon on the Mount that while it might be good to be important, it is more important to be good. It is not the “beautiful people” that will be blessed or happy but rather those people whom the world might consider as “nobodies” and insignificant or even as “losers” because they embrace the cost of discipleship and struggle to love and live the truth of the Gospel.
It is these unknown saints we honor today on All Saints Day – and, in honoring them and seeking their intercession, we remind ourselves that we are called to be also citizens of God’s Kingdom, we are called to be saints – imitating the example of those who have preceded us into heaven – by making those beatitudes our attitudes.
