On November 1, the Church celebrates all the saints: canonized or beatified, and the multitude of those who are in heaven enjoying the beatific vision and are only known to God.
The feast of All Saints should inspire us with tremendous hope. Among the saints in heaven are some whom we have known. All lived on earth lives like our own. They were baptized, marked with the sign of faith, they were faithful to Christ’s teaching and they have gone before us to the heavenly home from where they call on us to follow them.
The Gospel of Beatitudes, read at Mass, while it shows their happiness, shows, too, the road they followed; there is no other that will lead us where they have gone.