Overview:

The Solemnity of All Saints

This Sunday the church celebrates a solemnity on which it recognizes all of its saints – the official ones, those with designated feast days, and the unofficial ones, those who lived under the radar, leading unsung but saintly lives. We know that all believers, even saints-in-the-making, sometimes require encouragement. The readings today offer the genuine, eyes-wide-open sort of boost that many have needed both in the biblical era and our own.  

“See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are” (1 Jn 3:1).

Liturgical Day

Solemnity of All Saints (A)

Readings

Rv 7:2-14, Ps 24, 1 Jn 3:1-3, Mt 5:1-12

Prayer

As a child of God, are you open to sharing your faith with people “from every nation, race, people and tongue” (Rv 7:9)? Have you had an opportunity to do so? Can you describe that experience? 

Can you think of a few ways that you have been transformed by becoming a child of God?

Have you ever found yourself in one of the categories Jesus includes in the Beatitudes? Have you ever been “poor in spirit” or needed comfort as you mourned or been ridiculed because you worked for righteousness? And have you ever been on the other side, been one offering help in God’s name?

This Sunday’s first reading, from the book of Revelation, describes two visions of the faithful. The first is a group of 144,000 believers, who all have been marked with a “seal,” a stamp or mark showing that they belong to God. This sacred number – 12 x 12 x 1,000 – signifies that those bearing the seal may represent the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve disciples of Jesus and all who make up God’s first followers. 

The second vision focuses on a larger, more diverse multitude, “which no one could count, from every nation, race, people and tongue” (Rv 7:9). They are survivors of a period of great distress, yet they stand now with the angels and elders singing, “Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power and might be to our God forever and ever” (Rv 7:10). Two visions, very different, but all God’s people.

In this Sunday’s second reading, the writer of 1 John addresses an early Christian community divided by different understandings of what it means to be children of God. Apparently, some believed that purity was an internal quality that required no external action. But this writer begins by assuring his listeners that their actions had nothing to do with their status as children of God. Becoming God’s child was an act of God, a blessing that God bestowed on them, even if the future is still unknown. “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: When all is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn 3:2). Action transformed us into God’s children, and our efforts to emulate our Father will continue to transform us as we strive to follow the example of Jesus.

This Sunday’s Gospel reading recounts the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s Gospel. He describes what believers must expect and embody as they seek to follow him. His words are not ideals or goals. They are his expectations, and he speaks from his own experience of earthly life. The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us that Jesus’ words are those of “one who did not relate to reality as a foreigner, a reformer, a fanatic, the founder of a religion, but as the one who bore and experienced the nature of reality in his own body, who spoke out of the depth of reality as no other human being on earth ever before.” Jesus sees “the poor in spirit,” who may or may not have money, but have no illusions that they need God’s help to lead righteous lives. Those who mourn someday may require comforting themselves. He recognizes that those who show mercy someday will need it. Those who are “clean of heart” one day “will see God,” he says, and those who work for peace “will be called children of God,” two images echoed in our reading from 1 John. Finally, Jesus calls out those who are and will be persecuted, insulted and slandered because they seek righteousness. “Rejoice and be glad,” he says, “for your reward will be great in heaven!” (Mt 5:12).

How can we respond to these readings in our own lives? Perhaps the two visions from the book of Revelation remind us that our own experience of God the Father and Jesus the Son may be different, that we each come to it by different paths. Taking a different perspective, the writer of 1 John reassures us that we already are the children of God, but sometimes we forget that our efforts to embody Jesus’ teachings, that our attempts to live as he did, move us closer to seeing God as God is. In the Beatitudes, Jesus shares his understanding of God and of those among us who are divinely regarded – the poor in spirit, the clean of heart, those who work for peace. 

Thus, Jesus challenges us to recognize that we understand God more deeply both in those moments when we need God’s help or are offering it to others. We are children of God when we supply food banks or when we rely on them to feed our families, when we grieve or when we comfort others who grieve, when we offer mercy or when we receive it ourselves. Indeed, the idea that we can continue to know God by striving to live as Jesus has taught us may be just the encouragement we need right now. So let us renew our commitment to claim Jesus’ experience and expectations as our own. Today is the Solemnity of All Saints, so let us “rejoice and be glad” because God the Father and Jesus the Son invite us all to lead saintly lives.

Note: Nancy Haught is serving as guest columnist for Gina Hens-Piazza, who will return on November 22, 2026.

Nancy Haught is a biblical scholar and author of Sacred Strangers: What the Bible’s Outsiders Can Teach Christians. She lives in Portland, Oregon.