You Can Be a Saint Too

1 November 2025  Matthew 5:1-12

The Solemnity of All Saints

“Your reward is great in heaven.” Matthew 5:12

You aren’t what you should be, and you know it.

You can’t be what you should be. By now you should know that, too.

“When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, His disciples came to him. He began to teach them…” (Matthew 5:1-2). It’s a good thing He turned away and went up the mountain, because the crowds would never have been able to take what He had to say. He called all of us disciples “poor in spirit” (5:3) – our souls are underdeveloped. That is why we “mourn” (5:4) – we have wasted catastrophic amounts of time, energy, and money on things that don’t matter and don’t help. That is why we are “meek” (5:5), indicating softness, weakness, inability to stand up to the challenges that face us. Jesus wasn’t “meek” – the Romans didn’t bother crucifying meek people. Neither was John the Baptist meek, nor were any of the prophets. But we are, and because of that we “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (5:6) because we lack almost entirely the righteousness, and mercy (5:7), and purity of heart (5:8) it takes to resolve any of the bitter conflicts of our time. That is why there is a need for peacemakers (5:9), but we are not up to that challenge. So, there are persecutions and lies (5:10-11), and we are not up to that challenge either.

It is possible to read the Beatitudes as deeply and darkly ironic, knowing what we know about Jesus’ distrust of crowds (He turned His back on them when he saw them and went up the mountain), and what we know about the disciples inability to comprehend, leading to their denial and desertion of Jesus at the time of His greatest need. Jesus wasn’t commending poverty of spirit, or meekness, or insufficient amounts of righteousness. Those things are defects in disciples. Yet still he calls us disciples “blessed” because our reward is “great in heaven” (5:12). He wasn’t, of course, talking about “pie in the sky, by and by.” He was talking about the staggeringly better news that heaven is coming to us, in fact is coming to us today. The Church teaches that at every Mass heaven touches earth, that the Risen and Glorified Jesus is present to us and places His life in our hands. And because it is His life in us, His life in us today, then we are no longer “poor in spirit.” We have enough soul to give, enough righteousness and purity of heart for all the conflicts that rage around us. We can be peacemakers because we are at peace with heaven, and heaven with us, because heaven touches us at every Mass, every day if we want. The disciples didn’t understand that until after Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon them. But all of us who are baptized and confirmed have the Holy Spirit, too.

We aren’t what we should be, and we know it.

We can’t be what we should be, and we know that, too.

But because heaven touches us at every Mass, because Jesus puts His life in our hands, every day if we want, we are blessed and we are enough – enough for heaven, and for all of the challenges of these days.