I’ve sometimes asked people, “Do you think you will become a saint?”  The answer is usually, “I sure hope so.”  My response is, “You better do more than hope.”  Becoming a saint is more than “wishful thinking.”  That sort of hope is like saying “I hope it won’t rain today.”  There’s nothing you can do about the weather.  Hoping to become a saint is more like saying, “I hope I will pass the test that I’m going to take.”  There is something you can do to realize that hope.  Study! Just so, there is something you can do to realize the hope of becoming a saint.

We are “saints-in-the-making,” here on earth to learn to live in heaven.  The saints who have already arrived there inspire us with their example.

We celebrate an important feast in honor of All Saints.  It’s so important that when it falls on a Sunday it replaces the Mass prayers and readings for Sunday.  Some of these saints have been officially recognized and canonized by the Church.  Many more have not and so we have a feast in their honor along with all the official saints.  Our hope, the hope that is not just wishful thinking, the hope that we can do something to realize, is that we will be with them in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The most important “recognition” is not what we receive from other people.  Rather, what really counts is if Jesus recognizes us, if He sees in us a reflection of Himself.  He will do so if we live the Beatitudes which Jesus taught in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5: 3-12) and in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6: 20-23).

Reflecting on the Beatitudes, Pope Benedict XVI said that heaven, our “spiritual destination, toward which all the baptized strive, is reached by following the way of the Gospel ‘beatitudes’…. It is the same path Jesus indicated that men and women Saints have striven to follow, while at the same time being aware of their human limitations.”

All the Saints who have arrived at this “spiritual destination” pray for us as they share Jesus’s concern that none of us will be lost.

Speaking about the Solemnity of All Saints, Pope Benedict said: “On this day we feel revive within us our attraction to Heaven, which impels us to quicken the steps of our earthly pilgrimage. We feel enkindled in our hearts the desire to unite ourselves forever to the family of Saints, in which already now we have the grace to partake. As a famous spiritual song says: ‘Oh when the Saints, come marching in, oh how I want to be in that number!’ May this beautiful aspiration burn within all Christians, and help them to overcome every difficulty, every fear, every tribulation!”