Some time ago, on a dreary gray morning, I was on my way to run an errand, and I was nervous and agitated. A few hours in my future, I would officiate at a liturgy in the presence of someone who felt like an enemy to me. I had never met the person. The person had never personally offended me. But I was deeply unsettled at the thought of being in the same room as this person.
As I headed to my destination, I was stewing about what to do. I realized that I couldn’t muster alone the courage to make it through the liturgy. I was also fearful and anxious, so I was praying for God to help me. As I passed a hospital, I recalled that it was where my former spiritual director had been born. He had died only a few months before, and I was bereft of his spiritual guidance and still mourning his death. Pray for me, I uttered in my heart, addressing my friend in Christ who was continuing on his spiritual journey in the next life. Pray for me.
I knew he would, and I knew that I could benefit from his prayers. He had been a leader in the Church himself, guiding God’s people during a painful and difficult time. He had faced death threats over his decisions, which were rooted in love, however unpopular to some they were. He had known the heart-wrenching pain of trying to hold a fractured Church together. But he had embodied kindness and gentleness in the face of persecution. What more appropriate person could I ask to pray for me? He had persisted in love in the face of his enemies. Surely, his prayers would come to my aid.
And they did. After the service that morning, the person I was so afraid of meeting spoke to me. And to my discomfort at the time, the person embraced me. In hindsight I wonder, was this a gift? Was God speaking to me through this person, urging me to rise above petty resentment? Perhaps this was precisely how my prayers that day were answered, however unsettling and surprising the answer may have been.
Look above you at the stained-glass windows on either side of the nave. From your position in the pews, it’s very hard to make out the faces of that motley cloud of witnesses, much less identify who they are. I have often thought of those stained-glass windows as a cloud of witnesses hovering above us, praying for and with us, even watching over us in love. But I also wish that they were on eye level. I wish they seemed as approachable to us as my former spiritual director did on that day some years ago. I wish the saints depicted in glass above us would stand on the level ground with us, as Jesus does in Luke’s Gospel. In Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, they are delivered on a level place, unlike Matthew’s Gospel, where they are preached on a mountain. And so, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus looks up at his disciples before pronouncing his blessings and woes. Standing on the level ground before them, he looks right into their eyes.
And accordingly, Luke’s Beatitudes speak of real, concrete situations. The poor are those who are literally struggling to survive. The hungry are literally those who wonder where their next meal will come from. The sorrowful are suffering right here and now. The persecuted are those who dare to speak a word of the gospel to a world positioned against the gospel. These are real people and real problems.
For this reason, I wish the saints above us were more approachable. Don’t you want to see their faces? Don’t you want to see what they’re wearing? Don’t you want to imagine what their faces are saying about the lives they lived, with all their tangible problems? It’s far too easy for us to spiritualize the saints, to place them on pedestals, to make them superhuman. But the truth is that these saints were human and sinful and imperfect, just like us. As the hymn tells us, “you can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea, for the saints of God are just folk like me.”[1] Do you mean to be one, too?
These saints are both like us and perhaps unlike us, which might inspire us to be more like them. These saints, revered by the Church, known and unknown, are ones who have lived against the grain of the world. They are ones who have embodied in their fallible human lives Jesus’s commands to go above and beyond the comfortable and the usual tit-for-tat behavior of this world.
The saints have exceeded an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The saints have not only loved those who love them. They have loved their enemies. They blessed those who cursed them and prayed for those who abused them. They gave not just an inch but went the extra mile in love, mercy, and compassion. In short, the saints have shown forth in human time something of the infinitely bountiful and perfect love of almighty God.
But we still live in the now of the Beatitudes, where the poor only get poorer and the comfortable ignore their plight, where hungry bellies are the consequence of too many well-sated people, where the tears have not yet been wiped away from the eyes of all people, where cruel words are returned for cruel words, where it's popular to hate our enemies, and where many go above and beyond in violence and hatred rather than in love. And even while we muddle through this now of the present, the lives of the saints rise above the surface of this unjust world like a topographical relief showing us another way. In the lives of the saints, we catch glimpses of an alternative reality that is the kingdom of God, our promised inheritance. Meanwhile, in this now of the present, we wait with hope and eager longing for this kingdom to be fully realized.
I do wish those saints hovering above us were one level down, on this level place among us, so we could see more visibly their humanity. I wish they could come alive from those fragments of colored glass to tell us their stories. I wish we could hear their voices saying, yes, you can be one, too. Like you, we were poor and watched the poor suffer. We knew searing hunger and wept over empty stomachs. And yet, we lived with eyes and hearts towards that other reality, towards the kingdom of God. We lived as if there were abundance and not scarcity, love and not hate, hope and not fear.
Perhaps those saints would show us that God’s justice is far more than a balancing of the scales. God’s justice is not simply putting a woe on one side of the scale to balance out a blessing. God’s justice is not afflicting the rich and contented and powerful just to even out the score. For then, it would not be mere justice but crude retribution. Perhaps the saints would tell us that God’s justice requires going above and beyond the normal call of duty. And this means that in heavenly terms, loss is gain and gain is loss.
I suspect the saints would tell us that when aspiring to holiness and saintliness seems superhuman, Jesus offers us good news. The holy ordinariness of Christian living shines forth in doing things, in training to be virtuous in action, so that one day, yes, we might be saints, too.
In a world that urges us to cancel those with whom we disagree and hate our enemies, Jesus and the saints call us to pray for those who hate us, to love them beyond subjective emotion by acting as if we loved them. Jesus and the saints call us to return every evil word or action or curse with a good, kind, holy response. In all that we do, we are seeking to be some small echo of that One who on the cross went above and beyond, giving his life for those who would hate him, forgiving those who persecuted him.
In just a few minutes, Sloane will go into the water of the font, the same water that saints have passed through in ages past. She will die to an old way of life and rise to a new one that goes above and beyond in love. And all of us will make a promise to go above and beyond in supporting her, a promise that we should endeavor to keep for the rest of our lives. It’s a seemingly impossible task, but today, of all days, we remember that we’re never alone in this journey. As I learned on that gray day some time ago, an entire cloud of witnesses who have known the trials and tribulations of this life are right next to us on this level place, supporting us, praying for us, some are named and some remain unnamed. “You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea, for the saints of God are just folk like me.” And blessedly, by the grace of God, you and I can be one, too.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Sunday in the Octave of All Saints’ Day
November 2, 2025
[1] “I sing a song of the saints of God” by Lesbia Scott, Hymn 293 in The Hymnal 1982