The feast of All Saints has always been my favorite holy day (after Triduum of course which is in a class by itself). I love the hymn; I love the focus on the Church Triumphant, the "glorious cloud of witnesses"; I love the reminder that we are all called to be saints.

I realized today that it's really a very ecclesiological feast, which might explain part of its appeal for me. On this day, we, the Pilgrim Church on earth, celebrate and look with hope towards the Church Triumphant. The saints in all their glory are not separate from us; we are all part of the una sancta. This is reflected in every celebration of the eucharist, in which we join with "all the choirs of angels and saints" in praising God's glory in the Sanctus.

Today, we unfold and develop that element of our eucharist. In my parish, we pray the Litany of the Saints just before mass on this feastday. It was my joy and privilege to lead this litany tonight.

Our reading from the prophets is from the Book of Revelations, describing the church in glory, worshiping the Lamb. Our epistle reading reminded us that we are children of God now; what we shall be, we don't know, except that we shall see God as God is. And our gospel reading was the Beatitudes: instructions on how to become  a saint.

We celebrated the Eucharist with "Eucharistic Prayer #1", that lists the names of so many saints, apostles, and martyrs. Our small chant choir sang at mass tonight, and led us in chanting the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei.

Our presider tonight chanted many of the collects and dialogues as well, and gave us a thoughtful homily. It's really nice to celebrate a feastday as a feastday, worth celebrating with extra time and solemnity, instead of as a "holy day of obligation" where the important thing is to get people in and out with a minimum of fuss so as not to inconvenience them too much.

I love songleading on holy days because generally, the majority of the congregation are people who really want to be there. It makes a real difference in the level of participation and the quality of silence.

I love this feastday too because it's so Catholic. When I was younger, I was big on minimizing the differences between Catholic and Protestant: after all, we're all Christians together, that's the important thing, right? And I think that was an important movement in the decades after Vatican II, to heal some of the rift and emphasize our similarities. But about, oh, maybe 10 years ago, I started to feel as if, ok, it's time to reclaim and re-emphasize some of the specifically Catholic identity. I started making a point of wishing people well on their saints' days, and things like that.

The other important aspect of All Saints Day is the "all" part. The Catholic church formally recognizes the sainthood of a number of specific individuals; but also clearly teaches that there are many saints in heaven who don't have that formal recognition. The litany of the saints always ends with "All holy men and women, pray for us".

As I heard at Mass tonight, the saints were and are living images of Christ. Celebrating the lives of the saints, and including them in our prayer lives, reminds us that we so often receive God's graces and blessings through other people, through human-to-human contact.

And we, too, are called to be saints. Thanks be to God!