Wow! How did it get to be November already! This Sunday we celebrate the Solemnity of “All Saints,” and that is a good opportunity to consider why the Church presents us with Saints.

The saints are held up by the Church as examples of those who have gone before us and lived lives that were in some way heroic; they serve as models for you and me for how we ought to live our lives, in service to others and the Gospel teaching of Jesus.

We can think of several example saints: St. Therese of Lisieux, who showed us the “little way of love” as a way to pray to God; St. Francis of Assisi, and care for the poor; Saint Teresa of Calcutta who also cared for the poor. Saints Joan of Arc and Catherine of Siena who portrayed the power of women before their time; St. John Paul II whose dynamic witness to the Gospel included in his last years an example of humility in the face of a debilitating illness. St. Joseph, the patron of husbands and fathers; Our Blessed Mother, Mary, patroness of wives and mothers, and our patroness as Our Lady of Good Counsel.

You may have heard me say this in the past, but is it worth repeating: every Catholic should have 2 or 3 favorite saints, 2 or 3 favorite mysteries of the Rosary, and 2 or 3 favorite Stations of the Cross. These are all part of our shared Catholic identity, and shape our prayer lives within our families and faith community.

With today’s Gospel reading, let me expand my encouragement: what is your favorite Beatitude? In Chapter 5 of Matthew’s Gospel, we hear today these teaching s of Jesus that relate to how we are blessed by God. Some of these might need explaining! Blessed to mourn? Yes, when we mourn over our sins and change our lives!

Blessed the poor in spirit, or the meek? Yes, when we accept our hardships with humility as the servants of God.

Let’s choose to use the Beatitudes as a lens through which we view our discipleship. Each one invites us to consider others before ourselves, to work for peace and harmony in the world, to persevere in our journey to become holy. In short, the Beatitudes are a roadmap that was followed by the Saints we venerate in today’s solemnity. Saint Francis was meek and humble; Saint Joseph must have felt despair when he fled to Egypt with Jesus and Mary. Mother Teresa welcomed those who were abandoned in the gutters of Calcutta with love.

Perhaps your favorite saint is in your Confirmation name. Regardless of whom you have chosen, let us ask them to join their intercessions with our own today!

“May I take your coat?”

A simple offer when welcoming a guest into your home, perhaps, but not according to the first reading from Exodus. In the Old Testament time, when someone was giving a loan to a poor neighbor, it would be common practice to request their cloak as the guarantee of the loan. And Exodus is very clear: do not hold that clothing hostage, as it were, beyond sundown. “If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him before sunset” (Exodus 22:25).

In the Gospel, Jesus gives us clear direction, a command, really: To love God completely, you must love your neighbor. Consider the Gospel words precisely; in the first half of Jesus’ answer, the listener – and each of us – are called to love God with our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole mind. Accomplishing and living that faithfulness to God then defines who I am; the expression of how I love God reflects my inner moral code. We must make sacrifices in order to love God this completely, in that we must give up what the world offers us for the joy of receiving completely what God gives.

Taken together, this shows how we love ourselves, just as God loves us into existence. Which brings us to the second half of the Gospel commands: “The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).

We must then ask, “What’s the deal with the cloak?” In short, Jesus teaches the immediacy in which we must love our neighbor. Don’t wait for tomorrow to connect with them; don’t put off for some time in the future when you may need to start loving your neighbor. To do so is to reflect that we don’t need to love God now, either, and we can parcel out that love due to our Creator on our terms, in our timeframe.

Wouldn’t that be a dangerous foundation of love to stand upon! “I’ll love you later, God, when it is more convenient. And then after that I will love my neighbor.” Since God is unknowable in our human condition, at least in the totality of God, then any time we set limits on the time and place when we love God fully means that we have times and places where we choose NOT to love God. Yes, that would be very dangerous spiritual ground to stand upon.

Be the first to return the coat to your guests. Better still, never demand their cloak to begin with, but simply share the bounty of God in your life with your neighbor, by way of saying “Thank you!” to Jesus for His perfect and constant love of each one of us.

Let me begin this week’s Gospel reflection with a simple question: would you rather be known for telling the truth, or for telling lies?

I’m pretty certain of each person’s answer: you want to be known as truthful. You see, when we lie, we must keep that a secret; we can’t let the truth about our lie ever get out in public … because even if you are lying, you want people to believe that you are telling the truth. Even liars need to be believed as truthful.

Consider what unfolds with the conversation in the Gospel. Agents of the Pharisees approached Jesus and praised Him for being truthful, with little or no concern for the opinion of people or their status. They then pose a question about the census tax for Caesar. You’ve probably heard this passage before, but have you ever wondered, what does the first part of the conversation have to do with the second? Was their first part trying to induce Jesus to lie about the tax? Or, was it simply to say something that could be evidence before the Roman authorities? Did they assume that Jesus would “agree” that the tax was unfair, thus getting Himself on a watch list for the Roman rulers?

Of course, Jesus’ answer is truthful, without weighing in on the merits of the tax being demanded: “… give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God’s.” Simple. Direct. Easy!

So why don’t we always follow that rule? Is it because the list of what belongs to God is, well, everything but our sin?

Considered and interpreted another way: everything of the world belongs to the world, and God sees no particular value in these “things” of the world. What really belongs to God is our life. So how we live our life is really all that Jesus cares about. He doesn’t care who wins, but cares if you play fairly. He doesn’t care if you get promoted, but cares if you harmed others along the way.

He doesn’t care if you are wealthy, but cares about what you do to help the poor. Jesus doesn’t care if you have 5,000 followers or likes, but He does care that they follow you due to your good intentions and values. This is clear from His teaching in other Gospel passages. “Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no.” “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Or one of my favorites, “Remove the log from your eye before you help another with a splinter.”

Perhaps the Pharisees had more correct than we initially thought: Jesus spoke the truth, and is The Truth … and The Way … and our Life. Return that life to Him each day with honor and love, never needing to hide what we say or do.

Our Gospel this weekend seems, once again, to be a severe punishment being rendered. When no one came to the king’s celebration of his son’s wedding, he sent his troops into the byways to bring in guests … we can’t help but imagine some, at least, were brought in forcibly. And then someone is bound and thrown out for not wearing the proper garment? Ouch!

But let’s look deeper, as this is a parable, and in every parable Jesus is teaching something.

Are you ready for the ultimate wedding feast, the welcome into the Eternal Banquet of Heaven?

I think that is really the central point of Jesus’ teaching today; be ready, at all times, to be the servant of God. We heard the message a few weeks ago, “… let the dead bury the dead …” in references to being strong enough and committed enough to be a disciple.

For some of us, it is far easier to be a Catholic on Sunday than the rest of the week; we might feel that attending Mass satisfies the command to keep holy the Lord’s Day, and technically, it does. But that is not enough. You and I must be ready at any time to be called to Eternal Life.

Please, don’t take that as a message filled with doom and gloom. It is actually a glorious hope! We have all probably heard the polite/happy exchange between people: “What a great day to be alive!” “You’re right! It’s better than the alternative!” And we laugh together at the joke.

But is it? Don’t we, as chosen followers of Jesus actually yearn for “… the alternative?” I hope so! For Jesus, however, His teaching emphasized the “both-and” understanding of this teaching. Yes, we yearn for Heaven, but we also are invited to be filled with joy in this life on earth (John 15:11).

So make yourself ready for Heaven now; go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation if you haven’t been in a while. Practice witnessing the Gospel on Tuesday and Wednesday, too, not just on Sunday. When we live every day according to the Gospel, as disciples filled with Jesus’ joy, then we will in fact make every day sacred. We will have clothed ourselves in the wedding garment of our Baptism!

I could probably write about ten pages on this week’s Gospel passage, but then the bulletin would contain nothing else. Suffice to point out some very obvious elements included in the parable:

Vineyard → grapes → wine → Blood of Christ!  

Father sent his son→ son is killed → Jesus is killed on Calvary!

And this parable is spoken by Jesusbefore the Last Supper, andbefore His Passion! Jesus knew what would unfold. One Biblical scholar and researcher, Robert Dunne, places this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees on Tuesday of Holy Week. In 48 hours He would celebrate the Passover with His Apostles and be arrested. In 72 hours from this Gospel exchange, He would die on the Cross … for those same Pharisees, for His Apostles and disciples, for His Mother, for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob … and for you and I.

If you visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, it contains within the massive site both the Empty Tomb of Jesus, and the hill of Calvary. Down below the elevated viewing shrine for Calvary is a small glass window, looking at the rock that lies below where Jesus was crucified. The window shows that the rock is fractured with fine cracks.

Calvary – Golgotha – was at that time outside the walls of Old Jerusalem. Today it is within the walls of the city expanded by both Crusaders and Muslims over history. In Jesus’ time, they would never kill and bury the dead within the city!

Where Calvary stood was originally a quarry area, where large stone blocks – the size of tractor trailers – were being cut to expand the Temple mount. But those rocks were unacceptable to the Temple builders because of the cracks; Calvary was, literally, the “stone rejected by the builders which became the cornerstone.”

Think about that; think about how much we become aware of hidden within the Scriptures, viewed through the lens of time. Jesus’ listeners when today’s parable was new could not conceive of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, nor even of Jesus’ enduring presence in the world today, 2,000 years after they tried to silence him.

We are the Body of Christ; we are the living stones, rejected by the builders of secular society. We are the hands and feet, the eyes and ears of Christ in the world today, on our street, in our town, in our home. Be Christ to one another!