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Called to be Saints: Embracing Our Heavenly Citizenship

Bible Passage: Matthew 5:1–12a, 1 John 3:1–3

Summary: This homily reflects on the call to holiness highlighted in the Beatitudes and the promise of our identity as children of God, encouraging us to live in a way that bears witness to our heavenly calling.

Application: Through understanding our call to be saints, we can approach our daily challenges with hope and a sense of purpose. By embodying the Beatitudes, we can transform our lives to reflect the love of Christ, impacting those around us.

Teaching: The teachings underscore the belief in the universal call to holiness as emphasized in Vatican II. This homily illustrates the importance of living out our faith, grounded in our identity as children of God, through the grace provided by the sacraments.

Big Idea: As we celebrate All Saints Day, we are reminded that our vocation is to sainthood—an invitation to live out the ideals of the Beatitudes in our everyday lives, affirming our identity as beloved children of God and heirs of His kingdom.

Recommended Study: You may find it beneficial to explore the commentaries on the Beatitudes in your Verbum library, which can shed light on the historical context and spiritual implications of each phrase. Additionally, studying the notion of sanctity in the lives of the saints, particularly those celebrated on All Saints Day, could provide you with a richer understanding of how to communicate these themes of holiness and hope to your congregation.

Readings: Both readings emphasize our identity as saints, inviting us to aspire to the virtues echoed in the Beatitudes, and to recognize our dignity as children of God, destined for eternal life.

Catechism Points

Bible Passage: Matthew 5:1–12a

Summary: The Beatitudes reflect the values of the Kingdom of heaven and the virtues we are called to live as followers of Christ.

Catechism Numbers: 1716, 1717, 2546

Bible Passage: 1 John 3:1–3

Summary: This passage emphasizes our dignity as children of God and what this means for our lives and our hope for beatitude.

Catechism Numbers: 1996, 2030, 2822

1. Embrace the Beatitude Challenge

Matthew 5:1-6

You could reflect on how the Beatitudes challenge us to live counter-culturally. By embracing poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, and a hunger for righteousness, we begin our journey towards holiness. This section of Matthew emphasizes a radical transformation of how we see the world and ourselves, inviting us to trust in God’s promises. In seeking these virtues, perhaps we become more open to God's grace, allowing His love to shape our hearts and lives.

2. Practice Mercy and Purity

Matthew 5:7-12a

Perhaps these Beatitudes call us to practice mercy, purity of heart, and peacemaking even in challenging situations. Recognizing that living a life of holiness is not always easy, Jesus assures us that such lives lead to true happiness and eternal reward. As Catholics, maybe we realize that these virtuous actions contribute to our sanctification and witness to the world the love of God.

3. Live as God's Beloved

1 John 3:1-3

In this reading, we are reminded of our identity as children of God, which invites us to live with a hopeful expectation of seeing God as He is. You could suggest that this passage invites us to consider our current lives as a preparation for this ultimate beatific vision. Our daily choices and actions should reflect our destiny as saints, an identity beautifully confirmed by the Holy Spirit.

Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1–15 The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1–12)

Many years ago there was a dramatic movie about the first test pilots to break the sound barrier. No plane had ever flown faster than the speed of sound. Many people didn’t believe it was possible. Some thought the plane would disintegrate under the forces that would be generated. Eventually, in the movie, various pilots took their planes over the magic figure of 735 miles per hour, only to have the planes disintegrate with the huge vibrations, or to crash. The controls, it seemed, refused to work properly once the plane came to the sound barrier.

Finally, at the climax of the movie, another test pilot figured out what to do. It seemed that when the plane broke the sound barrier the controls began to work backwards. Pulling the stick to make the plane bring its nose up sent it downwards instead. Greatly daring, he flew to the same speed. At the critical moment, instead of pulling the stick back, he pushed it forwards. That would normally send the plane into a dive, but his hunch had been correct. The nose came up, and the plane flew on, fast and free, faster than anyone had travelled before.

The story is not historically accurate. Chuck Yeager, the first human to move faster than the speed of sound in real life, was often asked whether he’d done it the way it was shown in the movie, but he insisted it wasn’t like that. However, the story gives a graphic illustration of what Jesus is doing in these apparently simple words. He is taking the controls and making them work backwards.

The only explanation seems to be that he thinks he is taking God’s people through the sound barrier—taking them somewhere they’d never been before. The one thing most people know about planes going through the sound barrier is that you hear a loud explosion. Many of Jesus’ contemporaries would have said that this was a good picture of the effect he had.

Jesus wasn’t simply a great teacher, and if we try to describe him like that we will misunderstand him. This passage is the beginning of the famous ‘Sermon on the Mount’, which runs through chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew’s gospel, and sets out, in Matthew’s presentation of it, the main themes of Jesus’ proclamation. People often say what wonderful teaching the Sermon on the Mount is, and that if only people would obey it the world would be a better place. But if we think of Jesus simply sitting there telling people how to behave properly, we will miss what was really going on. These ‘blessings’, the ‘wonderful news’ that he’s announcing, are not saying ‘try hard to live like this.’ They are saying that people who already are like that are in good shape. They should be happy and celebrate.

Jesus is not suggesting that these are simply timeless truths about the way the world is, about human behaviour. If he was saying that, he was wrong. Mourners often go uncomforted, the meek don’t inherit the earth, those who long for justice frequently take that longing to the grave. This is an upside-down world, or perhaps a right-way-up world; and Jesus is saying that with his work It’s starting to come true. This is an announcement, not a philosophical analysis of the world. It’s about something That’s starting to happen, not about a general truth of life. It is gospel: good news, not good advice.

Follow me, Jesus said to the first disciples; because in him the living God was doing a new thing, and this list of ‘wonderful news’ is part of his invitation, part of his summons, part of his way of saying that God is at work in a fresh way and that this is what it looks like. Jesus is beginning a new era for God’s people and God’s world. From here on, all the controls people thought they knew about are going to work the other way round. In our world, still, most people think that wonderful news consists of success, wealth, long life, victory in battle. Jesus is offering wonderful news for the humble, the poor, the mourners, the peacemakers.

The word for ‘wonderful news’ is often translated ‘blessed’, and part of the point is that this is God’s wonderful news. God is acting in and through Jesus to turn the world upside down, to turn Israel upside down, to pour out lavish ‘blessings’ on all who now turn to him and accept the new thing that he is doing. (This list is sometimes called ‘the Beatitudes’, because the Latin word ‘beatus’ means ‘blessed’.) But the point is not to offer a list of what sort of people God normally blesses. The point is to announce God’s new covenant.

In Deuteronomy, the people came through the wilderness and arrived at the border of the promised land, and God gave them a solemn covenant. He listed the blessings and the curses that would come upon them if they were obedient or disobedient (chapter 28). Now Matthew has shown us Jesus, coming out of Egypt (2:15), through the water and the wilderness (chapters 3 and 4), and into the land of promise (4:12–25). Here, now, is his new covenant.

So when do these promises come true? There is a great temptation for Christians to answer: in heaven, after death. At first sight, verses 3, 10 and 11 seem to say this: ‘the kingdom of heaven’ belongs to the poor in spirit and the persecuted, and there’s a great reward ‘in heaven’ for those who suffer persecution for Jesus’ sake. This, though, is a misunderstanding of the meaning of ‘heaven’. Heaven is God’s space, where full reality exists, close by our ordinary (‘earthly’) reality and interlocking with it. One day heaven and earth will be joined together for ever, and the true state of affairs, at present out of sight, will be unveiled. After all, verse 5 says that the meek will inherit the earth, and that can hardly happen in a disembodied heaven after death.

No: the clue comes in the next chapter, in the prayer Jesus taught his followers. We are to pray that God’s kingdom will come, and God’s will be done, ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. The life of heaven—the life of the realm where God is already king—is to become the life of the world, transforming the present ‘earth’ into the place of beauty and delight that God always intended. And those who follow Jesus are to begin to live by this rule here and now. That’s the point of the Sermon on the Mount, and these ‘beatitudes’ in particular. They are a summons to live in the present in the way that will make sense in God’s promised future; because that future has arrived in the present in Jesus of Nazareth. It may seem upside down, but we are called to believe, with great daring, that it is in fact the right way up. Try it and see.

Consider the parable of the Good Samaritan – a true example of a saintly act. It’s a reminder that being a saint often means stepping out of our comfort zones, lending a hand to strangers, and showing love to people we may not even know. It's not always about the big gestures but those little interactions that make a saint!