All Saints

We all know that certain saints are patrons of particular professions or situations. If you lose your keys, you pray to Saint Anthony of Padua. He helps us find lost things. We may have other saints we turn to as well, whose patronage comes to us through tradition or an official decree. But some of the things our saints are patrons of may surprise us.

According to tradition, Saint Lawrence was martyred on a large iron grill. His torturers placed it over a fire and laid him upon it. At some point, the story goes, Lawrence said, “I think you can turn me over. I’m done on this side.” So, of course, the Church makes him the patron saint of chefs.

Then there is Saint Lucy. According to tradition, her torturers tore out her eyes. And she is the patron saint of the blind. We may find a measure of humor in the story of Saint Lawrence, but Lucy’s patronage can strike us as almost cruel. The very thing she was deprived of in this life is something we now ask her to guard.

Yet I think there is a lesson here about what a saint really is. I don’t think our ancestors in the faith simply had a dark sense of humor. I think they understood something profound about holiness.

A saint is someone who can look upon the wounds received in this life and see grace. They do not let those wounds become a source of bitterness, anger, and resentment. They choose to see, even in those wounds, God himself at work.

They recognize that God’s love and power are shown most clearly in his ability to bring good out of the evils of this world. No matter how much harm we do, no matter how much sin there is, God can bring good from it. He can make even what we have suffered a means of grace and salvation.

We see this in Christ himself. When he rises from the dead and appears to the disciples, he shows them his wounds. In his risen and perfect body, there remains what we might call an imperfection: the marks of the crucifixion. Those wounds remain forever.

Yet they have become signs of God’s power and love. The wounds that marked his death now proclaim his victory over it. They show us that even death cannot defeat the life God gives. Through Christ, death itself becomes a passage to everlasting life.

And if God can transform death into the means of everlasting life, then every suffering, every wound, every evil we endure can be transformed by his grace. That is what the saints recognize.

Saint Lawrence knows that the instruments of his torture have also become instruments of his salvation. He can face them because, through them, God draws him closer to himself. Saint Lucy may have lost her physical sight, but she has gained the vision of God: the direct, face-to-face vision of the One who is infinite and perfect, who loves her with an infinite love.

The saints realize that we can lose everything in this world and still gain what is infinite in eternity. And that is worth everything.

Today we celebrate all the saints, known and unknown. We celebrate those who learned to look upon their sufferings and their wounds with the mind of Christ. Where the world saw only loss, they saw the possibility of transformation, of grace and salvation.

If we wish to join them, then we must learn to do the same. We must embrace our sufferings and allow God to work through them. We must let him change them into something good. We must look upon our very wounds and see the possibility of grace.

That is where we find the path to heaven, the path to life.