All Saints Day
Within the 2000 year history of the Catholic Church we have been privileged to have some absolutely amazing Saints. There have been many who have gone to great lengths to lay down their lives and their bodies for their God and their Church. With the exception of St. John, all of the other Apostles were martyred for their faith. Their love for God and their fellow man was so great that no persecution was too great and no price was to high that they would not willingly and gladly pay it. St. Peter was crucified upside down and St. Agatha was forced into a brothel and then had her breasts cut off. St. Lucy gauged out her own eyes because men found them so attractive and she wanted to live her life for God alone and Saint Lawrence was grilled to death because Emperor Valerian demanded all the riches of the Church and Lawrence brought him the poor and the sick. Saints Thomas More and John Fisher were accused of treason and killed for refusing to betray their Catholic faith and recognize the authority of the King of England as the head of the new English Church. These are just some of the great men and women and women that we celebrate this week On All Saints Day. One of the things that all of these Saints have in common is the way they put their faith in God above absolutely everything also in their lives. While some of them had taken religious vows or were single when Thomas More went to the headsman he did so knowing that he was leaving behind his family to fend for themselves. His wife would no longer have her husband and his daughter no longer her father, but he went anyway because of his love for God and his faith in the Catholic Church. I am inspired by the faith of these and so many other Saints who chose to live out their faith in the face of adversity. One of the things that helped these Saints and all the other saints fight the good fight and make it to heaven was how they formed their conscience. We hear a lot in the media these days about people who do whatever they want and justify it by saying that they were taught in Catholic school and the Catechism to always follow their conscience and do what they believe is right. While this is true, it doesn’t tell the full story. While we are supposed to follow our conscience, we are also obligated to make sure that our conscience is correctly formed to the will of God. So if our conscience starts telling us to do something that God has asked us not to do, then we know there is a problem with our conscience and we need to work on it. During the Year of Faith, which began this month, the Pope has asked all of us to please read and study the Catechism. If we do this we will come to know God in a deeper way and it will help us to form our will to His, rather than asking him to form His will to ours. If we don’t form our Conscience to the will of God, then we will never have the strength to walk to the headsman’s block with Thomas More, be crucified with Peter, or gauge our eyes out like Lucy. We will be doomed to lives of quiet desperation, forever blown about by popular opinion and unjust laws. Only with God and His Church can we stand strong and run the race to the finish.
Within the 2000 year history of the Catholic Church we have been privileged to have some absolutely amazing Saints. There have been many who have gone to great lengths to lay down their lives and their bodies for their God and their Church. With the exception of St. John, all of the other Apostles were martyred for their faith. Their love for God and their fellow man was so great that no persecution was too great and no price was to high that they would not willingly and gladly pay it. St. Peter was crucified upside down and St. Agatha was forced into a brothel and then had her breasts cut off. St. Lucy gauged out her own eyes because men found them so attractive and she wanted to live her life for God alone and Saint Lawrence was grilled to death because Emperor Valerian demanded all the riches of the Church and Lawrence brought him the poor and the sick. Saints Thomas More and John Fisher were accused of treason and killed for refusing to betray their Catholic faith and recognize the authority of the King of England as the head of the new English Church. These are just some of the great men and women and women that we celebrate this week On All Saints Day. One of the things that all of these Saints have in common is the way they put their faith in God above absolutely everything also in their lives. While some of them had taken religious vows or were single when Thomas More went to the headsman he did so knowing that he was leaving behind his family to fend for themselves. His wife would no longer have her husband and his daughter no longer her father, but he went anyway because of his love for God and his faith in the Catholic Church. I am inspired by the faith of these and so many other Saints who chose to live out their faith in the face of adversity. One of the things that helped these Saints and all the other saints fight the good fight and make it to heaven was how they formed their conscience. We hear a lot in the media these days about people who do whatever they want and justify it by saying that they were taught in Catholic school and the Catechism to always follow their conscience and do what they believe is right. While this is true, it doesn’t tell the full story. While we are supposed to follow our conscience, we are also obligated to make sure that our conscience is correctly formed to the will of God. So if our conscience starts telling us to do something that God has asked us not to do, then we know there is a problem with our conscience and we need to work on it. During the Year of Faith, which began this month, the Pope has asked all of us to please read and study the Catechism. If we do this we will come to know God in a deeper way and it will help us to form our will to His, rather than asking him to form His will to ours. If we don’t form our Conscience to the will of God, then we will never have the strength to walk to the headsman’s block with Thomas More, be crucified with Peter, or gauge our eyes out like Lucy. We will be doomed to lives of quiet desperation, forever blown about by popular opinion and unjust laws. Only with God and His Church can we stand strong and run the race to the finish.
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