Liturgical Readings for : Wednesday, 1st November, 2023
November 1st – Solemnity of All Saints – Solemnity
FIRST READING
A reading from the book of the Apocalypse 7:2-4. 9-14
I saw a huge number, impossible to count, of people of every nation, race, tribe and language.
I, John saw another angel rising where the sun rises, carrying the seal of the living God; he called in a powerful voice to the four angels whose duty was to devastate land and sea,
‘Wait before you do any damage on land or at sea or to the trees, until we have put the seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.‘
Then I heard how many were sealed: a hundred and forty-four thousand, out of all the tribes of Israel.
After that I saw a huge number, impossible to count, of people from every nation, race, tribe and language; they were standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands. They shouted aloud,
‘Victory to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’
And all the angels who were standing in a circle round the throne, surrounding the elders and the four animals, prostrated themselves before the throne, and touched the ground with their foreheads, worshipping God with these words,
‘Amen. Praise and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and strength to our God for ever and ever. Amen.’
One of the elders then spoke, and asked me,
‘Do you know who these people are, dressed in white robes, and where they have come from?’
I answered him, ‘You can tell me, my lord.’
Then he said,
‘These are the people who have been through the great persecution,
and because they have washed their robes white again in the blood of the Lamb’.
The Word of the Lord Thanks be to God.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 23
Response Such are the men who seek your face, O Lord
1.The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness, the world and all its peoples.
It is he who set it on the seas; on the waters he made it firm. Response
2. Who shall climb the mountain of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place?
The man with clean hands and pure heart, who desires not worthless things. Response
3. He shall receive blessings from the Lord and reward from the God who saves him.
Such are the men who seek him, seek the face of the God of Jacob. Response
SECOND READING
A reading from the first letter of John 3:1-3
We shall see God as he really is.
Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us,
by letting us be called God’s children; and that is what we are.
Because the world refused to acknowledge him, therefore it does not acknowledge us.
My dear people, we are already the children of God
but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed;
all we know is, that when it is revealed we shall be like him because
we shall see him as he really is.
Surely everyone who entertains this hope must purify himself,
must try to be as pure as Christ.
The Word of the Lord Thanks be to God.
Gospel Acclamation Mt 11: 28
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened,
and I will give you rest, says the Lord.
Alleluia
GOSPEL
The Lord be with you. And with your spirit
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew 5:1-12 Glory to you, O Lord.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.
‘How happy are the poor in spirit; theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Happy the gentle: they shall have the earth for their heritage.
Happy those who mourn: they shall be comforted.
Happy those who hunger and thirst for what is right: they shall be satisfied.
Happy the merciful: they shall have mercy shown them.
Happy the pure in heart: they shall see God.
Happy the peacemakers: they shall be called sons of God.
Happy those who are persecuted in the cause of right: theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
‘Happy are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven; this is how they persecuted the prophets before you.’
The Gospel of the Lord Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
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Gospel Reflection Nov 1 Feast of All Saints Matthew 5:1-12
The word ‘all’ in the title of today’s feast is important. Today we celebrate not just the canonized saints but all those who lived holy lives and are now with God in heaven, most of whom have not received any formal recognition from the church. This is what is referred to in today’s first reading as a ‘huge number, impossible to count, of people from every nation, race, tribe and language’. What distinguishes them is that they opened themselves fully to the Lord’s presence and allowed him to live in them. All of them, in different ways, reflected something of the portrait of the disciple that Jesus paints for us in the beatitudes of today’s gospel reading.
In the beatitudes, Jesus is giving us a portrait of the saint we are all called to become. The different beatitudes could be understood as like the different pieces of coloured glass that make up a stained glass window. In one sense, Jesus is giving us a self-portrait. He is uniquely the person that is portrayed in those beatitudes. Yet, he was also showing us the kind of person that he calls us all to be, and can empower us to be through his Spirit. Whereas the beatitudes as a whole portray the disciple of Jesus, each individual beatitude is itself a way of following the Lord. Some ways of following the Lord will come more naturally to us than others. We might find ourselves drawn to some of the beatitudes more than to others. If we give expression in our lives to any one of the beatitudes, it can easily lead to the living out of all the others. Some people may be drawn to the beatitude, ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for what is right’, for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth. Such people will also tend to inhabit the beatitude, ‘Blessed are those who mourn’, because they will mourn over the presence of sin, the absence of goodness, love and justice, in their own lives and in the lives of others and in our world; they mourn that the kingdom of heaven is not yet a reality on earth. Such people will tend to be merciful, showing merciful love to those who cry out for it; they will be peacemakers, working to reconcile those who are divided. Some people might be drawn to the beatitude, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart’. The pure in heart are those whose heart is given over to God before all else. They seek what God wants in all things. Such people will invariably be poor in spirit; they will recognize their complete dependence on God for everything. They will tend to be gentle, in the sense of not arrogantly insisting on their own way but always seeking God’s way. One beatitude always leads to others, and, eventually, they all lead into each other. They are all of a piece; they belong together, like the pieces of a stained glass image, or like a diamond which looks differently from different angles.
Jesus declares that the people who live out of the attitudes and values expressed in the beatitudes are truly blessed. They will know the Lord’s joy in this life and in eternity. In the beatitudes, Jesus is putting before us a whole way of life that is worth striving for. We won’t always give expression to the beatitudes fully. We will always fall short of this vision for human living that the Lord puts before us. All the Lord expects is that, having asked his forgiveness, we keep journeying on, pressing on towards this goal, with the help of the Holy Spirit. The Lord calls all of us to be saints, even though he knows we are also sinners. Saint Paul in his letters refers to all the baptized as saints. He addresses his letters to the saints of God in a particular city, all the members of the church. Paul is reminding us that we are already saints, in the sense that the Holy Spirit has been poured into our lives from the moment of our baptism. Through the Spirit, we have come to share in Jesus’ own relationship with God, calling God, ‘Abba, Father’. Saint John in today’s second reading calls on us to ‘think of the love that the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called children of God’, and it goes on, ‘we are already the children of God’, already sons and daughters of God. God has already done and continues to do a good work, a holy work, in our lives. Our calling is to keep opening ourselves up ever more fully to what God is doing in our lives, by keeping the path of the beatitudes always in view. At the end of our earthly journey, we will come to that eternal moment when, in the words of the second reading, ‘we shall become like God, because we shall see him as he really is’. Then, we will finally and fully be the person of the beatitudes, we will be holy as God is holy, as loving as God is loving, and we will join that ‘huge number, impossible to count’, referred to in the first reading.
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The Scripture Readings are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd.
