Bishop Anthony B. Taylor delivered this homily on All Saints Day, Nov. 1.
In today’s Gospel we have Jesus’ beatitudes, and since today is All Saints Day, I would like to focus on the fourth beatitude: “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for holiness, they shall have their fill.”
The average person 2,000 years ago was never far from physical hunger: they lacked food security. Nor could they simply turn the faucet to have water flow right into the house. They had to walk to a well and bring back water in heavy jugs.
Most people in Jesus’ audience had experienced desperate hunger and thirst at some time in their life, so when they heard this beatitude, they knew Jesus was using their experience of a life or death situation — the risk of death by starvation or dehydration — to talk about a very serious matter: personal holiness.
By speaking this way, Jesus is challenging us to ask ourselves how much we really want to be holy — as much as a person dying of hunger and thirst wants to eat and drink? Most people want to live good lives, but they desire holiness in only a rather vague or general way so when difficult situations occur, they are not prepared to make the sacrifices that doing the right thing demands, especially when they know some people will not like the results.
That is why I have to remind myself constantly that the only one I really have to please is the Lord, and sometimes this means embracing the cross, especially when what the Lord requires is unpopular or easily misconstrued as lacking in charity, when that’s not the issue.
Look at the sorry state of the world around us! Isn’t it true that genuine holiness is one of the greatest needs of our time? If we long to live a life founded solidly on faithfulness to the Word of God as intensely as a starving person longs to eat, Jesus promises us that our desire for a full, holy, happy life will be fulfilled.
Today I come before you as a spiritual father who knows the hurt and confusion some you have experienced this last month when you learned that one of the teachers at Mount St. Mary had to submit her resignation due to having entered into a same-sex civil marriage in violation of her obligation as a Catholic school teacher to live in conformity with the teaching of the Church. I also have tremendous admiration for Mount St. Mary school leadership who have sought above all to please the Lord in all the things they have had to do, even though they knew that some people were not going to like the results.
I imagine this has also been difficult for some of you present today. Sometimes it can be confusing to know what is the right thing to do. That is when we have to trust in Christ and his Church to guide us. It may even seem that the world has better answers or easier solutions. It takes true humility for us to trust in Christ and his Church for the right way to go, especially when following Christ may cause us suffering and can lead us on a road that few choose to follow.
It is our hunger for holiness that keeps our eyes focused on Christ during these difficult times.
St. Augustine captured an important facet of the meaning of hungering and thirsting for holiness when he wrote: “Oh God, you have made us for yourself and our souls will find no rest until they rest in you.” This longing for the Lord is what Jesus is talking about in the fourth beatitude. But often our thoughts run in the opposite direction.
Sometimes we are even tempted to think of a life of holiness as a boring and burdensome way to live, full of prohibitions and in weak moments we may even start to think that happiness is best found outside the rules that Jesus and his Church have established.
But is this true? Are we really happiest when we know deep in our heart that what we are doing is wrong? If you say “yes,” I want to hear your story, because that is the opposite of everything I have seen and experienced over the course of 33 years of priestly ministry.
In terms of material goods, we live in the most abundantly blessed societies in human history, but from what I have seen, there are two commodities that are in very short supply in this blessed land — and it’s no surprise that if one is missing, the other will be missing as well.
One thing we lack is holiness. The other thing we lack is happiness. And there is a clear connection between these two shortages. Jesus knew the truth when he said: “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for holiness, they shall have their fill.”
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