Feast of All Saints

“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like God, for we shall see God as God is.”
—1 John 3:2-3

All Saints has always been my favorite feast day of the Catholic calendar, since long before I actually became a Catholic. What inspires me is the idea that we are all called to become saints, and this does not mean some artificial standard of moral purity or piousness. Rather, it means to live in such a constant state of openness to the present moment that we are constantly in the process of becoming, though what exactly we are becoming “has not yet been revealed.” What we do know is that we are becoming more like God, which is to say, able to see the world from a whole and complete perspective, and to love it all unconditionally. This passage from the day’s liturgy has a wonderfully contemplative ring to it. We are coming to know God not as we thought God to be, but as God is. In the process, we are coming to know ourselves not as we thought ourselves to be, but as we truly are.