1 November 2026 · Latin Rite
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“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Matthew 5:8
Today the Church lifts our eyes to the whole family of God already in glory: not only the saints with feast days and statues, but the great multitude “that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages”. Most of them are unknown to us. Some of them are our own grandparents. The solemnity celebrates the Church triumphant and reminds the Church on earth where she is going.
John sees them “robed in white”, and he is told how the robes became white: “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14). Holiness is not a human achievement that earns heaven. It is the grace of Christ received and allowed to transform a life. Every saint is first of all a forgiven sinner. That is why the feast is good news for us.
The Gospel gives the portrait of a saint: the Beatitudes. They describe Jesus himself, poor in spirit, meek, merciful, pure of heart, a peacemaker, persecuted for righteousness. The Catechism calls them the picture of Christ's face and charity (CCC 1717). To become a saint is to let that face be formed in us.
John's letter adds the hope that holds it all together: “we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed… we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). The Second Vatican Council teaches that all the faithful, of every state and condition, are called to the fullness of Christian life and the perfection of charity (Lumen Gentium 40). Holiness is not for a few. It is the vocation of every baptised person.
Theme: “A multitude no one could count.”
All Saints: the Church in glory shows the Church on earth her destiny and the way to it, the Beatitudes.
“Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” Leviticus 19:2
“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” Revelation 7:9
Apply: Thank God for the holy people in your own family.
“Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.” Psalm 24:3–4
“I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”” Revelation 7:14
Apply: Plan your Confession this month.
“But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever.” Daniel 7:18
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Matthew 5:8
Apply: Choose one beatitude to practise each day this week.
The saints went before us; the same grace is offered to us.
There is a place in the multitude for each of us.
Take-home resolution: Read the life of one saint this month.
Dear brothers and sisters, today is a family feast. We celebrate not one saint but all of them, the known and the unknown, the great multitude that no one can count.
When we hear the word “saint”, we may think of statues and halos and miracles. But John saw a crowd from every nation, tribe and language. Among them are mothers who prayed the rosary every evening, fathers who worked honestly, children who died young, priests and sisters who served quietly. Some of them are from our own families.
How did they get there? The elder tells John: “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Not by being perfect from the beginning, but by letting Jesus wash them again and again. A saint is a sinner who never stopped coming back to God.
And how does a saint live? Jesus gives us the Beatitudes. Poor in spirit: knowing that I need God. Meek: not proud or violent. Merciful: forgiving. Pure of heart: looking at others without lust or envy. Peacemakers: building bridges in our families and parishes. These are not rules imposed from outside; they are the face of Jesus himself.
St John tells us: “we are God's children now.” We already belong to this family. Holiness is not for a few special people. The Church says that every baptised person is called to holiness. Pope Francis speaks of the “saints next door”, ordinary people who live their faith with love.
So today, let us thank God for the saints who have gone before us, and let us ask them to pray for us. And let us take one step this week: one beatitude, one confession, one act of mercy. The multitude is not yet complete; there is a place for you.
Most saints in heaven were never canonised. Today is their feast too: grandparents, teachers, nurses, farmers, quiet parishioners.
Pope Francis called them the saints next door (Gaudete et Exsultate 7).
📖 Leviticus 19:2
📖 Revelation 7:9
Apply: Name one ordinary person whose faith formed yours, and thank God for them.
📖 Micah 6:8
📖 Luke 16:10
Apply: Choose one small daily duty and do it this week with love, for God.
📖 Psalm 24:3–4
📖 Matthew 5:3–10
Apply: Pick one Beatitude to practise all week.
The saints are not statues; they are family. They want us to join them.
Holiness is not extraordinary; it is ordinary life lived with extraordinary love.
Take-home resolution: This week I will do one ordinary duty with great love, and thank God for one hidden saint who helped me.
Dear brothers and sisters, when we hear the word saint we think of statues, haloes and miracles. But today's feast is much bigger than the saints whose names are in the calendar. St John saw a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language (Revelation 7:9). Most of them were never canonised. Today is their feast.
Pope Francis speaks of the saints next door: parents who raise their children with love, men and women who work hard to support their families, the sick, elderly religious who never lose their smile (Gaudete et Exsultate 7). Perhaps your grandmother, who prayed the Rosary every evening and forgave those who hurt her, is among that multitude. Perhaps a teacher who never gave up on a difficult pupil.
The Second Vatican Council taught clearly that all the faithful, of whatever state or rank, are called to the fullness of Christian life and the perfection of charity (Lumen Gentium 40). Holiness is not reserved for priests and nuns. It is the vocation of the mother at home, the driver in traffic, the student before an exam.
How? Jesus gives the portrait in the Beatitudes: poor in spirit, meek, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers (Matthew 5:3–10). Holiness grows in small things: patience at the dinner table, honesty at work, a kind word to someone nobody likes, a quiet prayer in the middle of a busy day. Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much (Luke 16:10).
So today let us thank God for the saints next door who formed our faith, and let us ask their help. And let us leave this Holy Mass with a simple resolution: to do one ordinary thing this week with extraordinary love. That is how the great multitude was formed, and that is how we can join it.
In the Creed we confess the communion of saints. Today let us understand what we believe and why we pray to the saints.
📖 2 Maccabees 15:12–14
📖 Hebrews 12:1
Apply: Remember the dead of your family in prayer this month.
📖 Jeremiah 15:1
📖 Revelation 5:8
Apply: Choose a saint as a friend and ask for their prayer daily.
📖 Sirach 44:1–15
📖 1 Corinthians 11:1
Apply: Read the life of one saint this month.
Veneration of the saints leads us to Christ, the source of all holiness.
The goal is not only to admire the saints but to become one.
Take-home resolution: This month I will read the life of one saint and pray daily for the dead of my family.
Dear brothers and sisters, every Sunday in the Creed we say: I believe in the communion of saints. On this solemnity it is good to ask what these words mean, because our Protestant friends sometimes ask us why Catholics pray to the saints.
The Church teaches that the one family of God exists in three conditions: some are pilgrims on earth, some have died and are being purified, and some are in glory contemplating God (CCC 954). All of us belong to the one Body of Christ. Death does not cut us off from one another. The Letter to the Hebrews says that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1).
Why do we ask the saints to pray for us? For the same reason we ask one another to pray. The saints are close to God and they love us; their intercession is one of the ways they serve God's plan (CCC 956). In the Book of Revelation the elders before the throne hold golden bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints (Revelation 5:8). Their prayer does not compete with Christ, the one Mediator; it flows from His love and leads to Him. We honour the saints, but we adore God alone (CCC 2132).
When the Church canonises someone, she declares that this person practised heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God's grace, and is now with God (CCC 828). The saints show that the Gospel can be lived in every century and every culture: in Rome and in Kerala, in palaces and in slums, in youth and in old age.
So the saints are friends, intercessors and models. St Paul could say: be imitators of me, as I am of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). Choose a saint this month as your friend. Read their life. Ask for their prayer every day. And let this Holy Mass, where heaven and earth are joined, renew your desire not only to admire the saints but to become one.
Children, who is a saint? Someone who loves God and others very much.
Saints were children once, like you. They made mistakes, said sorry, and kept trying to be good.
Jesus gave us a list of ways to be happy: be kind, be humble, forgive, make peace.
Today choose one: make peace with a brother or sister or a friend. That is how saints begin!
Almighty ever-living God, by whose gift we venerate in one celebration the merits of all the Saints: through their prayers, grant us the abundance of your mercy, and make us holy as you are holy, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
On the Solemnity of All Saints the Church lifts her eyes from the road to the goal. The four readings answer one question: who will see God, and how? Revelation shows the finished company, a multitude no one can count, standing before the throne and the Lamb. Psalm 24 asks who may climb the Lord’s mountain and answers: clean hands and a pure heart. The First Letter of John says that we are already God’s children, and that one day “we will see him as he is”. In the Gospel Jesus names the way: the Beatitudes, which end in the promise “they will see God”.
So the readings run from vision to identity to road. The saints are not a small club of heroes but the whole family of the redeemed, known and unknown. The key words of the day are seeing, belonging and blessedness.
Setting.
The Book of Revelation was written toward the end of the first century, by tradition under the emperor Domitian (about AD 95), to seven churches in the Roman province of Asia, in what is now western Turkey. These Christians lived under pressure: the cult of the emperor, trade guilds with pagan feasts, and the threat of persecution. Revelation is apocalyptic writing. It speaks in symbols, numbers and visions, and its aim is to strengthen faith, not to give a timetable of the end.
Chapter 6 ends with the opening of the sixth seal and a terrified cry: “the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” (6:17). Chapter 7 is the answer. Before the seventh seal is opened, the story pauses to show that God’s servants are protected and that a countless people already stands before the throne.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” (7:9)
God promised Abraham descendants as many as the stars, too many to count (Genesis 15:5). Here the promise is kept. The list “nation, tribes, peoples, languages” is the same list used in 5:9 for those whom the Lamb ransomed by his blood. They “stand”: in 6:17 no one could stand; now they stand before God, the posture of the risen and of priests at worship.
“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (7:10)
The saints do not praise themselves. Their first word is that salvation is God’s gift. The throne and the Lamb are named together: Christ receives the worship due to God.
““Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?”” (7:13)
The elder asks a question in order to teach, a common device in apocalyptic writing (compare Zechariah 4:2).
“These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (7:14)
A bold paradox: blood makes white. The robes are not white by their own effort but by the self-giving of Christ. In Greek, “have come out” is a present participle, literally “those who are coming”: the procession is still arriving, and the Church on earth is part of it.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism draws on these visions to describe the liturgy of heaven, in which the Church on earth already takes part (CCC 1137–1139). The Second Vatican Council teaches that the Church is one family in three states: some are pilgrims on earth, some are being purified after death, and some are in glory, and all are joined in the same love of God (Lumen Gentium 49; CCC 954). In many places the white garment given at baptism has been linked with the white robes of Revelation 7. All Saints is the feast of that whole multitude, including the great crowd of the uncanonized.
Setting.
Psalm 24 is an entrance liturgy. Pilgrims came up to the Temple in Jerusalem and, at the gate, asked who might enter; a priest or choir answered with the conditions (compare Psalm 15 and Isaiah 33:14–16). The second half of the psalm (vv. 7–10, not sung today) calls on the gates to open for “the King of glory”, probably during a procession with the ark.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?” (24:3)
The verb “stand” links the psalm with Revelation 7:9: the saints are those who now “stand” in the true holy place.
“Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.” (24:4)
Jesus takes up this verse in the sixth Beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8).
“Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.” (24:6)
A note on the text. The Hebrew text reads literally “who seek your face, O Jacob”. The NRSV, with the Greek and Syriac versions, reads “the face of the God of Jacob”, which gives the clearer sense. Either way, the pilgrims seek the God who made his covenant with Jacob.
How the Church reads it.
The early Church sang the second half of this psalm of Christ’s Ascension: the gates of heaven open for the risen King of glory. St Justin Martyr already explains it in this way (in substance). On All Saints the Church sings the first half: those who follow that King up the mountain are the people of clean hands and pure hearts. The refrain, “Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face”, gathers the whole feast into one desire.
Setting.
The First Letter of John comes from the circle of the beloved disciple, late in the first century. The community had been shaken by a split: “They went out from us, but they did not belong to us” (2:19). The writer reassures those who remained that they truly know God and are truly his children. Love and truth are the two marks of the real Christian.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” (3:1)
“And that is what we are” is missing in some late manuscripts but is well attested in the oldest ones, and modern translations include it. Being God’s child is not a pious title; it is a fact.
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” (3:2)
Seeing and becoming go together. We become what we behold. The full likeness of the children to the Son will come when we see him face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12).
“And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” (3:3)
Here is the bridge to the Gospel: the pure in heart will see God. Holiness is the hope of heaven at work in daily life.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism quotes this passage when it speaks of heaven: the blessed “see him as he is”, face to face (CCC 1023), and because of God’s transcendence this vision is possible only when God himself opens his mystery to us (CCC 1028). St Augustine, preaching on this letter, says that the whole life of a good Christian is a holy desire: God enlarges our hearts by making us wait, so that we may receive him (in substance, Homilies on the First Letter of John 4.6).
Setting.
The Beatitudes open the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), the first of the five great discourses in Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew writes for a largely Jewish-Christian Church and presents Jesus as the teacher who fulfils the Law and the Prophets (5:17).
Jesus goes up the mountain and sits down, as a teacher did. A reader who knows the Scriptures thinks of Moses on Sinai. But Moses received the Law from God; Jesus speaks on his own authority: “But I say to you” (5:22).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (5:3)
The first Beatitude is the door to the rest. Only those who know they are poor can receive the kingdom as a gift.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (5:4)
An echo of Isaiah 61:2–3, where the anointed one comes “to comfort all who mourn”. Jesus is that anointed one.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (5:8)
This is the centre of today’s feast. The goal of every Beatitude is God himself.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (5:9)
Not only peaceful people but those who make peace. The promise joins the Gospel to the second reading: they will be called what, by grace, they already are.
“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (5:12)
The lectionary stops here (12a). The reward is not a payment but God himself, the same reward the saints now enjoy.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that the Beatitudes “depict the countenance of Jesus Christ and portray his charity” (CCC 1717). They are first of all a portrait of Christ, who was poor, meek, merciful and persecuted; then they are a portrait of the saints, in whom his face shines again. They answer the natural desire for happiness that God has placed in every heart (CCC 1718).
St Augustine wrote a whole commentary on the Sermon on the Mount and called it a perfect pattern of the Christian life (in substance). Pope Francis, in his exhortation on holiness, Gaudete et Exsultate (2018), takes its title from Matthew 5:12 and calls the Beatitudes the Christian’s identity card (GE 63). The Second Vatican Council teaches that all the faithful, of every state of life, are called to the fullness of Christian life and the perfection of charity (Lumen Gentium 40).
Are only 144,000 people saved?
No. The number is a symbol of fullness: twelve times twelve times a thousand. In the same chapter John sees a multitude “that no one could count” (7:9). The Church reads both as pictures of the one people of God, complete and countless.
If Christ is the one mediator, why do we ask the saints to pray for us?
Christ is the one mediator between God and humanity (1 Timothy 2:5). The saints do not replace him; they are united to him and share his love for us. Just as we ask one another to pray on earth, we ask those already with God, who “do not cease to intercede” for us through Christ (CCC 956).
Is All Saints only for canonized saints?
No. Canonization declares that certain people are certainly in heaven and may be held up as models. The feast honours the whole multitude, including grandparents, neighbours and unknown faithful people who are now with God.
In the Roman tradition, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to Our Lady and all the martyrs in the early seventh century. In the eighth century Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel in St Peter’s to all the saints on 1 November, and in the ninth century Pope Gregory IV extended the feast to the whole Western Church. The Preface of the Mass speaks of “the festival of your city, the heavenly Jerusalem, our mother”. The Litany of the Saints, sung at baptisms and ordinations, is a fitting prayer today, and the feast leads straight into tomorrow’s commemoration of all the faithful departed: the Church in glory and the Church being purified are remembered side by side.