Pope at All Saints Angelus:
‘Holiness is both gift and call’
At the Angelus prayer on Friday, Pope Francis reflects on
the Solemnity of All Saints, and reminds us that holiness is both a gift and an
invitation.
By Devin Watkins
“Today's Solemnity of All Saints reminds us that we are all
called to holiness.”
That was how Pope Francis summed up the feast, in his
Angelus address to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square.
He said the Saints are not some distant, unreachable human
beings. But rather they trod the same difficult path of life along which we
travel, with all its successes and failures.
Holiness, said the Pope, cannot be achieved through our own
strength. It is “the fruit of God’s grace and our free response to it”, making
it both a gift and a call.
Free gift
As a gift given by God, holiness cannot be bought but only
welcomed with the help of the Holy Spirit.
“It is a matter of growing ever more in the awareness that
we are grafted onto Christ, as the branch is united to the vine,” he said, “and
therefore we can and must live with Him and in Him as children of God.”
Call to answer
Pope Francis said the Saints show us that holiness is also a
call extended to all Christ’s disciples.
“It is the path of fullness that every Christian is called
to follow in faith, proceeding towards the final goal: definitive communion
with God in eternal life.”
Holiness requires us to embrace God’s gift responsibly and
to “take on a serious and daily commitment to sanctification in all the
conditions, duties, and circumstances of our lives, seeking to live everything
with love, with charity.”
Imitate our predecessors
The Saints who now stand before the throne of God admitted
during life that they needed the divine light and so abandoned themselves to it
in trust, said the Pope.
“They constitute the ‘Holy City’ to which we look with hope
as our definitive goal, as we make our way through this ‘earthly city’,
fatigued by the bitterness of the journey.”
So, he said, “we are encouraged to imitate them.”
Lift eyes to Heaven
Remembering the Saints, concluded Pope Francis, “impels us
to raise our eyes to Heaven: not to forget the realities of the earth, but to
face them with more courage and hope.”
And he asked the Virgin Mary to accompany us “as a sign of
consolation and sure hope.”
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