Reflection: 31st Sunday of the Year - Feast of All Saints: God is in the ordinary

 

Mural inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels

Mural inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels

When the feast of All Saints occurs on Sunday, 1st November, the liturgy celebrates this great feast instead of the usual liturgy of 31st Sunday of the Year.

The feast of All Saints: we honour those who are named saints in the liturgical calendar of the Church and the unnamed saints who belonged to our families, or people we worked with or who we knew. Their lives may not have been heroic like some of the saints but they led holy lives which people recognised in an unofficial way.

The feast of All Saints always draws my memory back to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. While attending a Columban meeting to elect a new leader for our Mission Society in Los Angeles, some of us, most of us, went for a guided tour of the cathedral.

I found it unforgettable. The reason? The guide pointed out the huge tapestries on the walls of the cathedral. They were the work of an artist, John Nava, who used a new digital weaving method to show the stories of faith through the ages. Magnificent, beautiful tapestries.

The well-known saints were represented as you would expect, but mostly the figures were ordinary people dressed in the ordinary clothes of their era. Men, women and children moving, walking in the same direction. The guide pointed out that the figures on the tapestries are the people of God through the ages walking in the direction of the altar.

The altar being the focal point of the cathedral and the focal point of all these people on their journey. A journey towards God, a Eucharistic people fed at the table for the journey of faith.

The floor of the cathedral is sloped slightly downwards, to give the altar prominence. No altar rails separated the people from the sanctuary, the tourist guide led us down to the precinct of the altar where a metal cross stood behind the altar. I noticed that the cross showed a section of burnished metal from many hands touching it in adoration and veneration, similar to the Good Friday ritual of venerating the Cross.

This magnificent cathedral honours God through the people who worship there; they in turn represent the faith of people throughout the world from every age. The figures are so ordinary…

The gospel for the feast of All Saints is from St Matthew’s gospel. Moses received the Ten Commandments from God; he was the servant given the task of forming the people into the people of God. Jesus is the new Moses, the Beatitudes are the ‘new’ Ten Commandments. They are fulfilled in the pattern of his life and example.

Fr Richard Leonard SJ in his book Preaching to the Converted, says that the Hebrew concept of ‘blessing’ is about where the presence of God is to be found - God is present and active in our own experience in the here and now.

Yes, saintly activity is present in ordinary people doing ordinary things for the love of God.

Columban Fr Gary Walker is currently living at the Columban house in Sandgate, Brisbane. 

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