THE SUNDAY AFTER ALL SAINTS

November 2, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

 

On our observance of All Saints, it seems fitting to ask the obvious question: What is a saint? Well, the word saint literally means “holy one.” In the Bible, it refers to God's holy people. In the Old Testament, the “holy ones” or “saints” are the people of Israel; in the New Testament, they’re the entire membership of the Church.

 

Early in Church history, however, the word “saint” gained a more specific meaning. In this narrower sense, a saint is a departed Christian who displays three characteristics.

 

The first characteristic is that a saint is someone whose life on earth demonstrated such holiness that we can be as sure as possible that they’re now in heaven. In the early Church, the clear sign of sainthood was martyrdom. For early Christian believers, there was no doubt that those who’d shed their blood and given their lives rather than deny the faith were now reigning with the Lord in glory. But as the persecutions lessened, it became clear that Christians of outstanding holiness who’d lived and died peacefully in their beds could also be reliably recognized as saints in heaven.

 

The second characteristic is that because the saints in heaven enjoy the fullness of the Lord’s presence without any earthly worries or distractions, they’re free to give their full and undivided attention to praying for the Church and its members on earth. 

 

Like most ancient peoples, the early Christians revered their dead. They often gathered for worship, devotions, and festive banquets at the martyrs’ burial places, especially on the anniversaries of their deaths —their “birthdays into heaven.” On these days, they sometimes used the sarcophagus's horizontal slab as a makeshift altar to celebrate the Eucharist. And these early Christians soon discovered that the martyrs’ tombs were holy places, where healings and other miracles were apt to occur. As Saint Augustine of Hippo explained in the early fifth century, when you prayed in the presence of a saint’s relics on earth, that same saint was praying for you in heaven, often with powerful effects.

 

The third characteristic of sainthood eventually became an official decision that this holy person merited some form of public recognition by the Church.

Beginning in the third or fourth century, churches were dedicated and named in honor of individual saints. These churches were often built over the saints’ earthly resting places. The most famous is St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, built over the cemetery on the Vatican Hill where Saint Peter was buried. In other cases, where the burial place was too remote and hard to get to, the saint’s relics might be disinterred and brought to a more conveniently located church, where they were usually placed in or under the altar. 

 

At around the same time, the Church began to designate days in the calendar for the commemoration of particular saints: usually on the anniversaries of their deaths. For example, the feast day of Saint Mark, one of this parish’s patrons, is April 25th, traditionally believed to be the anniversary of his martyrdom in Alexandria, Egypt, in the year 68. And so, the term “saint” characteristically came to designate those heroes and heroines of the faith who have both churches and days in the calendar dedicated in their honor. 

 

To recapitulate, then, the term “saints” refers in a general sense to the whole assembly of the faithful. And in a more restricted sense, it refers to those departed Christians whose holiness was such that they were believed, first, to be with God in heaven; second, to be praying for the Church and its members on earth; and third, to be worthy of having churches dedicated in their honor and days in the calendar set aside for their commemoration.

 

A problem emerged, however, when the Church found, after several major persecutions, that it had more martyrs than days in the year to commemorate them. So, between the fifth and ninth centuries, the Feast of All Saints grew up as a sort of catchall festival when the Church honored all the holy men and women who’d lived and died in the faith of Christ. At first, it was celebrated in different places on different days of the year. Then, in the year 732, Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel to All the Saints in Saint Peter’s Basilica on November 1st, which the Western Church has kept in its Calendar ever since as All Saints Day.

 

So, we come full circle to the biblical understanding of the saints as a great multitude, many more than we can name or number. While we celebrate some of the more notable ones on their designated days in the Church year, the Feast of All Saints reminds us of the millions of anonymous holy men and women down through the centuries who’ve gone before us to their heavenly reward: a great cloud of witnesses watching us and cheering us on as we run the race that they’ve completed ahead of us.

All Saints’ Day thus reminds us, also, that we’re all called to be saints. Contrary to popular belief, sainthood is not an exclusive vocation reserved for a few elite souls of extraordinary sanctity. When we read the lives of the saints, we discover not stained-glass figures of otherworldly perfection, but real flesh-and-blood people, of every temperament and personality, exhibiting all the anxieties, neuroses, hang-ups, annoying habits, temptations, and sins that beset us all —and then some. Yet, by their perseverance in God’s grace, they show us what life in Christ looks like. If they could do it, then so can we. 

 

We receive the call to sainthood at baptism. All Saints’ Day is one of the four great baptismal occasions of the Church year. The others are the Easter Vigil, Pentecost, and the First Sunday after the Epiphany, a.k.a. the Baptism of Christ. On these days, it’s especially appropriate to administer Holy Baptism, or, failing that, to renew our baptismal vows, as we shall be doing today.

 

So, today we give thanks for all the saints – both the famous heroes and heroines of the faith whose lives encourage us in our Christian journey, and also the anonymous holy women and holy men who’ve run the same race before us. Today, we take the opportunity to recommit ourselves to following in their footsteps, “encouraged by their examples, aided by their prayers, and strengthened by their fellowship.” In this way, we make our own the words of the wonderful hymn, “the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”