The Prayers of the Saints
Many of the shops now have various sorts of Halloween decorations. These seem to get more elaborate and creative each year. This is a good reminder for me that we are celebrating the great feast of All Saints. This feast was already being celebrated way back in the fourth century; it was in the 8th century that it was being celebrated on 1st November.
The feast expresses our unity with all those who have died and are with God, praying for us. We pray in the opening prayer of the Mass that the prayers of the saints will give us an ‘abundance of reconciliation with God’. We acknowledge all the saints as our brothers and sisters.
What is a saint? Jesus sets out for all of us how we are to become saints when he delivers the Beatitudes — the list from St Matthew which is read as the Gospel for the feast. Jesus is challenging us to a new way of life, just as he challenged those who sat listening to him beside the Sea of Galilee.
This way of life is a way of love. To live the Beatitudes is to be a light shining in the darkness. Our world, filled with violence, hatred and death needs Christ’s light shining in our lives.
Here is a prayer written by St John Henry Newman. It was recited daily after Communion by Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her Sisters of Charity. It can be our prayer for the month of November, asking for the grace to be a light that shines in the darkness.
Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go. Flood my soul with Your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of Yours. Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus! Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine. It will be you, shining on others through me. Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me. Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You. Amen.
