November 2, 2026
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the Solemnity of All Saints on November 1, 2026 at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chicago, IL. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; Psalm 24; 1 John 3:1-3; and Matthew 5:1-12a.
Today is my favorite feast day of the church year! Today, we celebrate all the people who are in heaven or will be in heaven with God. We celebrate not just those well-known individuals whom the Church has canonized. We celebrate the huge multitude of unknown saints. There may be people we’ve known in our lives — such as some of our relatives — who are already part of that multitude.
But many people have a limited idea of what it means to be a saint. They think only of mellow people, people out of touch with the “real” world, perhaps sitting on clouds. But the saints run the whole gamut of personality types, races, and cultures. Dorothy Day famously said, “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”
As we sing joyful songs and pray with joyful readings, let us first celebrate that our God is a god of merciful love.
Lord Jesus, you are the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world: Lord, have mercy.
You call us to lives of holiness as children of God: Christ, have mercy.
Through you comes our salvation: Lord, have mercy.
Back in 2014, just one year into his papacy, Pope Francis called for an extraordinary synod of bishops to meet later that year. The synod was to focus on the real-world challenges facing families around the world. Now that it is no longer customary for the majority of people to enter into life-long sacramental marriages and have lots of children in their early 20s, how is the Church being called to minister to families today?
This synod was called “extraordinary” because it wasn’t convened to issue answers as much as to ask questions. Unlike the usual way that popes had previously called synods, Francis brought together not just a representative sample of bishops from around the world, but also lay experts from every continent — including married couples! — experts on the real-world contemporary challenges to families. After the extraordinary synod of 2014 surfaced the questions, other people spent the next year studying and developing the issues, and then Francis convened an ordinary synod in 2015. Francis encouraged synod delegates to openly debate the questions, rather than give long speeches to one another.
Only after that two-year process of listening, study, and debate had concluded did Francis then write his document on the family, heavily influenced by the deliberations of the previous two years. In early 2016, he released the apostolic exhortation called Amoris Laetitia, or The Joy of Love. The main thrust of the document is this: all people are called holiness, and the Holy Spirit can provide grace to assist everyone on their journey towards personal holiness. Grace is not available just to married people. Grace is available to single people. Grace is available to people living together outside of a sacramental marriage. Grace is available to divorced people. Grace is available to widowed people. Grace is available to people in same-sex relationships. Grace is available to people in polygamous relationships. Our job as the Church is to help all people to be open to the grace to grow in holiness.
And, at the heart of the matter, that is much of what the Solemnity of All Saints is about. God destines all of us for heaven. And unless we completely cut ourselves off from God, we will be among the saints in heaven on the last day. That is why this is my favorite day of the Church year — it’s a day to celebrate that we indeed can receive the grace to live lives of holiness. It may not happen all at once, but grace is always available at every moment, to strengthen us on the journey. Grace is not just for the people who are already holy. We can accumulate doses of grace throughout lives to become more and more holy.
On All Saints Day, we celebrate not just the canonized saints — the people whose names are prefaced by the honorific “Saint” with a capital S. We also celebrate the unknown millions of people in heaven who do not have the extensive fanbases that the capital-S Saints have here on earth. Those unknown millions are also saints, even if they didn’t complete some public act of holiness or heroism that would make us aware of their names. For example, I have the sure and certain hope that my godmother is in heaven. Today is also a day to celebrate what’s called the communion of saints — that’s the idea that everyone here on earth is connected to everyone who has gone to heaven before us and all who will live on this earth after us. When we pray about a deceased loved one or about a canonized saint, we are connected to them within the communion of saints. The preposition in the sentence is not that important: we can pray to the saints and to our loved ones, we can pray with them, and we can pray for them.
A few weeks ago, Pope Leo called together people from around the world to assess the reception of Amoris Laetitia 10 years after it was promulgated by Pope Francis. In most of the world, the faithful quickly embraced and accepted the teachings of Amoris Laetitia. However, 10 years later, there remain pockets of resistance to the exhortation. Like most documents written by Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia is a long document with 9 chapters and nearly 400 footnotes. Most of the concerns about Amoris Laetitia have centered on footnote 351 in chapter 8, where Pope Francis opens up the possibility that people in irregular marriages may be allowed to receive communion.
But to focus on this particular footnote is to lose the entire forest of grace because of a single tree of technicality. Jesus said that there are tax collectors and prostitutes who are entering into heaven before the religious leaders who get caught up in the intricacies of the rules. In our gospel today, Jesus teaches that people who are suffering in any number of ways — whether they are being persecuted or are in mourning — that they are blessed. No matter our circumstances today, we have the capacity to receive the grace necessary for sainthood.
Pope Francis emphasized these themes a lot. The first apostolic exhortation of his pontificate in 2013 was called The Joy of the Gospel, explaining that all of us will find joy — even in times of personal darkness — by sharing the gospel with others. The second, issued in 2016 as we’ve already mentioned, was called The Joy of Love, explaining that grace was available to all people no matter their specific family circumstances. And in the third in 2018, Francis explained that holiness is meant for everyone — parents, workers, students, and ordinary people — through small gestures of love and kindness in daily routines. Francis chose the title of that exhortation from today’s gospel passage: Rejoice and Be Glad.
Friends, no matter our family circumstances, no matter our station in life, no matter how often we come to church or how we know the catechism, God provides us with the grace to keep growing in holiness. Let us, too, rejoice and be glad. The kingdom of heaven is ours.