St. Anthony the Abbot Catholic Church

Looking to the saints reminds us that in the end Christ is always victorious; that the "gates of hell" cannot resist the power of God's grace. The origins of today's liturgical celebration are a striking example of that truth. The Church began celebrating this Solemnity in Rome, in the year 609, under Pope Boniface IV.

At that time, one of the older residential areas of the city was located near a huge Roman temple called the Pantheon. The Pantheon had been built four centuries earlier by the emperor-architect Hadrian. It had held huge statues of all the gods most revered by the imperial family (thus its name, "pan-theon", "all the gods").    Between the time of the Emperor Hadrian and that of Pope Boniface, the Roman Empire had become Christian, and the Pantheon had been abandoned.

But by the year 600 it was becoming the object of frequent complaints from those who lived in its neighborhood. When they walked by the old temple, strange things would happen. Eerie voices would threaten them; bricks would fall down menacingly; ice-cold breezes would accost them, along with worse things than mere breezes. In short, it was clear that the place was haunted by demons.

Around the year 609, the complaints reached new heights, and the neighborhood appealed directly to the Pope to do something about it. Razing the massive structure to the ground was too gargantuan a task, so Boniface IV found a creative solution. He decided to exorcise the temple and re-consecrate it as a Christian Church, dedicated not to "all the gods" but to "all the Roman martyrs" and to Mary, the queen of all saints and martyrs. This he did, and soon after, the complaints stopped. It still serves as a church today. The memorial of that consecration became so popular that Pope Gregory III extended its celebration to the whole Church. Thus "All Saints' Day" was born - an everlasting reminder that the powers of evil are no match for the power of Christ.

Looking to the saints reminds us that we are part of a bigger story. The sacrifices and struggles we go through here on earth to be faithful to Christ and the Church are worth it. We need this reminder. We need it more than once a year. And the Church gives it to us more than once a year - we celebrate saints' days all throughout the liturgical calendar.

But All Saints' Day reminds us of something that can get lost in the other saints' days. The most famous saints often led such extraordinary lives that it's hard for us to emulate them. It's easy to honor them, recognizing all that they did for Christ, and all that Christ did for them. But honoring the saints is not enough.  We also need to emulate them. And this is where All Saints' Day comes in.

Today we honor all of saintly men and women who have not been canonized by the Church, who are not famous saints, but who have nevertheless followed Christ heroically and taken their place in heaven. These are the saints that lived ordinary lives on the outside, and extraordinary lives on the inside. God didn't overlook them. And there is no shortage of them. They make up a "great multitude, which no one could count," as St. John puts it in the First Reading.

Most of us live ordinary lives on the outside. And maybe some of us, because of that, think that we can't really live up to the high standard set by the famous saints who did miracles and lived dramatic lives. But today's Solemnity assures us that we can. It assures us that if we live each day as Christ would have us, striving to do God's will with all our strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves, then our lives, which look so ordinary on the outside, will be truly extraordinary on the inside.