The ancient Roman celebration of All Saints opens a window upon heaven. Through the Apocalypse, the Beatitudes, the Gregorian propers, the solemn Divine Office and the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the Church reveals the destiny of those redeemed by Christ. Drawing upon the Fathers, Dom Prosper Guéranger, Blessed Ildefonso Schuster and the great liturgical commentators, we explore the profound theology preserved in the traditional feast, its vigil and octave, and the invitation to holiness addressed to every Christian.
There is something particularly moving about the Church’s celebration of All Saints as the year draws towards its close. The days shorten, the countryside grows bare, and the approaching winter reminds us of the transience of earthly things. Yet upon the first day of November, the Roman liturgy breaks into a song of extraordinary joy. Gaudeamus omnes in Domino — let us all rejoice in the Lord. The priest approaches the altar in white vestments; the Gloria is sung; the Church assembles before the throne of Almighty God in company with those who have already reached their eternal home. For a little while, the veil separating the pilgrim Church from the glory of heaven seems almost transparent.
The feast is sometimes explained as an opportunity to remember all those saints who have no individual commemoration in the calendar. This is certainly part of its purpose, but it scarcely approaches the magnitude of what the Church celebrates. All Saints concerns the fulfilment of the Christian vocation itself. It reveals what becomes of human nature when redeemed by Jesus Christ, sanctified by the Holy Ghost and brought at last to the vision of God. The multitude celebrated upon this day constitutes the Church Triumphant: men and women who have persevered in grace, completed their earthly course and entered into that happiness for which mankind was created. Their glory is not an independent human achievement. It is the triumph of Christ’s Redemption in the souls He has saved.
The ancient Roman liturgy expresses this truth with a completeness that deserves careful attention. Its texts have not been arranged as a collection of edifying religious sentiments. The Introit establishes the object of our rejoicing; the Collect invokes the intercession of the blessed; the Epistle presents the heavenly multitude before the Lamb; the Gospel reveals the dispositions required for entrance into His kingdom. The Offertory speaks of the peace enjoyed by the just, while the Communion antiphon returns to Our Lord’s promise that the clean of heart shall see God. The entire Mass is directed towards the same supernatural reality. Its prayers do what the Church’s liturgy always does at its best: they teach the Faith by making us pray it.
The origins of the solemnity take us back to the earliest centuries of Christian worship, when the anniversaries of the martyrs were celebrated at their tombs. The faithful gathered where the bodies of those who had suffered for Christ were laid to rest, offering the Holy Eucharist in thanksgiving for their victory and in communion with the Church whose living members they remained. The number of martyrs eventually made separate celebrations impossible, and collective commemorations arose. In the Christian East, such observances were already established by the fourth century. The sermons of St Ephrem and St John Chrysostom preserve evidence of this early devotion, while the ancient Syrian practice of commemorating the martyrs after Pentecost survives in the liturgical traditions of the East.¹
Rome developed her own observance. On 13 May 609 or 610, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the former Pantheon to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs. The building’s conversion into a Christian sanctuary was an eloquent sign of the victory of the Faith over the pagan religion that had once dominated the Empire. During the eighth century, Pope Gregory III established an oratory in St Peter’s honouring the whole company of saints, and the commemoration of 1 November became increasingly associated with their collective veneration. Gregory IV subsequently encouraged its wider observance during the ninth century. Under Sixtus IV, in the fifteenth century, the feast received the octave that remained part of the Roman calendar until the reforms of 1955.²
Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, the Benedictine Archbishop of Milan, approached these developments with the historical sensitivity characteristic of his Liber Sacramentorum. For Schuster, the Roman stational tradition and the veneration of the martyrs reveal the intimate relationship between the Church’s sacrificial worship and her belief in the communion of saints. The martyrs were honoured because they belonged to Christ; their deaths had been united to His Passion, and their victory depended upon the power of His Resurrection. The Christian altar, frequently erected above or near their resting places, bore witness to a communion which death had been unable to destroy.³
The observance inherited by the Tridentine Missal was therefore already ancient. St Pius V did not create its essential theology or principal scriptural texts. He transmitted a liturgical inheritance formed through centuries of Roman worship, preserving in the Church’s public prayer the convictions of generations who had lived and died in the expectation of heavenly glory.
The fullness of the older celebration begins before 1 November itself. All Hallows’ Eve, now commonly associated with secular entertainments, was traditionally a penitential vigil. Its Mass was celebrated in violet, without the Gloria or Creed, and without the Alleluia before the Gospel. In the older discipline, the Mass of such a vigil ordinarily followed None, reflecting the fasting and preparation proper to the approach of a great solemnity. Medieval writers, including William Durandus, attest the penitential character of this observance. The faithful prepared to rejoice with the saints by remembering that entrance into their company requires conversion and perseverance.⁴
The change at First Vespers is consequently all the more striking. The Church exchanges the austerity of preparation for the splendour of the feast. The opening antiphons draw upon the vision of St John: the innumerable multitude before the throne, the angels falling upon their faces in adoration, and the heavenly court offering praise to God. The familiar white vestments of the Mass, the candles, incense and solemn chants acquire their proper meaning within this larger act of worship. They belong to an earthly celebration whose reference is the heavenly liturgy. The worshippers remain in this world, but their prayers are directed towards the society of the blessed.
In 2026, the solemnity falls on Sunday, 1 November. Under the older Roman observance followed by the Old Roman Apostolate, All Saints takes precedence over the Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, which is commemorated. The feast is observed as a Double of the First Class with its octave, extending to 8 November. Its Mass, Gaudeamus omnes, and the proper festal Office remain central to the day’s celebration. The coincidence of the feast with Sunday gives the faithful an especially fitting opportunity to contemplate the destiny towards which every Lord’s Day should direct them.⁵
The Introit deserves to be heard with particular care: Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem festum celebrantes sub honore Sanctorum omnium: de quorum solemnitate gaudent Angeli et collaudant Filium Dei. Let us all rejoice in the Lord, celebrating the festival in honour of all the saints, at whose solemnity the angels rejoice and praise together the Son of God.
The wording is doctrinally exact. Our rejoicing is in Domino. The angels praise the Son of God. The saints are honoured because the divine work of salvation has reached its fulfilment in them. The Church does not turn aside from Christ to celebrate another object of devotion; she glorifies Christ in those whom He has redeemed. Their sanctity manifests His grace, their perseverance His assistance, and their happiness the accomplishment of His promises. The opening words protect the whole feast from any misunderstanding of the honour rendered to the saints. They are loved and venerated as God’s friends, while the adoration belonging to the Most Holy Trinity remains altogether distinct.
Dom Prosper Guéranger understood All Saints as the great consummation towards which the liturgical year moves. His treatment in The Liturgical Year begins with the multitude described in the Apocalypse and proceeds to consider the completed society of the redeemed. The mysteries celebrated from Advent onwards — the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension of Our Lord, followed by the descent of the Holy Ghost and the sanctification of the Church — all have their ultimate purpose in the gathering of souls into the heavenly Jerusalem. The festival reveals the harvest of Redemption. What was promised by the prophets, accomplished through Christ and applied through the sacramental life of the Church is now contemplated in those who have entered everlasting glory.⁶
Guéranger’s interpretation gives the feast an unmistakably nuptial character. The Church is the Bride of Christ, prepared through the grace and merits of her divine Spouse for the eternal marriage supper of the Lamb. The saints constitute the glorified members of that Bride, already enjoying the happiness towards which the rest of the faithful are travelling. This image is particularly appropriate as the ecclesiastical year approaches its conclusion. The Church has spent the preceding months following the mysteries of Christ, contemplating the lives of His saints and imploring the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Now she beholds the end towards which those mysteries and graces are directed.
The Collect gathers the doctrine of the feast into one of those admirably concise prayers for which the Roman Rite is distinguished: Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui nos omnium Sanctorum tuorum merita sub una tribuisti celebritate venerari: quaesumus; ut desideratam nobis tuae propitiationis abundantiam, multiplicatis intercessoribus, largiaris. Almighty and everlasting God, who hast granted us to honour the merits of all Thy saints in one solemnity, we beseech Thee to bestow upon us the desired abundance of Thy mercy through their multiplied intercessions.
There is no embarrassment here about merit or intercession. The Church asks God to have regard to the merits of His saints and to grant mercy through their prayers. Both expressions belong to the received vocabulary of Catholic doctrine. The saints merited through the grace of Christ while living upon earth; their merits remain entirely dependent upon His infinite merits. Their intercession in heaven continues the charity they exercised during life, now perfected by their union with the divine will.
St Thomas Aquinas explains that the blessed know in God those things which pertain to their heavenly happiness and to their appointed assistance of the faithful. Their charity has not been diminished by death. Having entered into a more perfect union with Almighty God, they remain concerned for the salvation of their brethren. Aquinas consequently defends both their knowledge of our prayers and the usefulness of invoking their intercession. The saints are not independent dispensers of grace. They pray to the same God upon whom the faithful on earth depend, and their petitions receive their efficacy from His providence.⁷
The Council of Trent subsequently reaffirmed this doctrine with particular clarity. Its twenty-fifth session taught that those reigning with Christ offer prayers to God for men and that it is good and useful to invoke their assistance through Jesus Christ, our only Redeemer and Saviour. The distinction between divine worship and the veneration of the saints was carefully maintained. The Church’s practice rests upon the conviction that all her members belong to one supernatural communion under Christ their Head. The Collect of All Saints expresses that teaching with the simplicity of a prayer intended to be offered, not merely discussed.⁸
The Epistle, Apocalypse 7:2–12, places before the congregation one of the most arresting visions in Sacred Scripture. St John beholds the servants of God sealed upon their foreheads, hears the symbolic numbering of one hundred and forty-four thousand from the tribes of Israel, and then sees a multitude beyond the power of man to count. They come from every nation, tribe, people and tongue. Clothed in white robes and bearing palms, they stand before the throne and the Lamb, proclaiming that salvation belongs to God.
The vision is of immense theological importance. It reveals the universality of the Church in her final perfection. Earthly nations, languages and historical circumstances have not been abolished from the memory of the redeemed, but their divisions no longer obstruct the perfect communion of charity. The company of heaven includes people whom the world never knew and whom the Church never publicly canonised. Many lived in obscurity, carrying out ordinary duties in fidelity to God. Others endured persecution, poverty, sickness or abandonment. The saints whose names adorn our calendars are the publicly recognised witnesses of a heavenly society far greater than any earthly record can contain.
This does not mean that every human being who dies is thereby numbered among the blessed. The Church celebrates those who have actually attained heaven, whether known to us or not. The distinction matters because the doctrine of eternal salvation must never be dissolved into the assumption that death itself confers holiness. Those before the throne have been redeemed through Christ, have died in His grace and have reached the fulfilment of salvation. Their presence is a source of tremendous hope, but it does not abolish the necessity of repentance, perseverance and fidelity to God.
The white robes and palms of the Apocalypse recall the victory of the martyrs, yet their significance extends to the entire company of the redeemed. The garments speak of purity obtained through the Blood of the Lamb; the palms signify triumph through Him. The multitude does not congratulate itself upon its own virtue. It worships. At the centre of the scene stands the Lamb, whose sacrifice has made its happiness possible. Heaven is revealed principally as the possession and adoration of God.
Here the Roman liturgy provides a necessary corrective to the way heaven is sometimes imagined in popular religious language. Eternal life is frequently described as reunion with departed relatives, freedom from earthly suffering or the enjoyment of peace. These hopes are not without foundation, provided they are properly understood, but they do not constitute the essence of heavenly beatitude. The blessed enjoy the immediate vision of God’s divine essence, the visio beatifica, and in that vision their intellects and wills find their perfect fulfilment. Their joy in one another proceeds from their common possession of God. He is their happiness, and every other good is loved in Him.
The Gradual introduces an expression that might initially seem surprising amid such rejoicing: Timete Dominum, omnes Sancti ejus — fear the Lord, all ye His saints. The Roman liturgy has no difficulty placing holy fear beside heavenly happiness. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and filial reverence is inseparable from charity. The saints learned to love God by recognising His holiness, acknowledging their dependence upon Him and refusing to make peace with sin. Those who have entered glory no longer fear losing Him, but the reverence that marked their earthly lives has reached its perfection in adoration.
The Alleluia then gives voice to the invitation of Christ: Venite ad me, omnes, qui laboratis et onerati estis: et ego reficiam vos. Come to Me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you. The passage from holy fear to promised rest is deeply consoling. Those already in heaven have completed their earthly labour, while those who remain below hear the same invitation addressed to themselves. Our Lord does not promise a journey free from suffering. He promises the grace necessary to follow Him and, at its end, the rest that the world cannot give.
The Gospel of the feast, Matthew 5:1–12, supplies the answer to an obvious question. How does one become a saint? The Church responds by proclaiming the Beatitudes. Christ ascends the mountain and teaches poverty of spirit, meekness, sorrow for sin, hunger and thirst for justice, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking and perseverance under persecution. The lives of the saints exhibit these virtues in innumerable circumstances, but their source and measure remain the teaching of Our Lord.
St Leo the Great, in his celebrated sermon on the Beatitudes, sees in the mountain a deliberate reference to Sinai. The God who once spoke to Moses now speaks through the Incarnate Word, bringing the divine law to its perfection. Leo’s treatment is especially valuable because he refuses to confuse Christian blessedness with outward circumstances. Poverty of spirit consists principally in humility and detachment from earthly possessions. Material poverty may assist the acquisition of this virtue, but it does not automatically confer it; a wealthy Christian may possess genuine poverty of spirit, while a poor man may remain consumed by pride or resentment. The Lord looks to the disposition of the soul.⁹
The same principle governs the other Beatitudes. Meekness is strength governed by charity. Mercy requires a heart disposed to relieve suffering and forgive offences, without abandoning justice. Purity of heart reaches into the intentions and desires from which outward conduct proceeds. Hunger for justice demands more than a public profession of moral principles; it requires the individual Christian to conform his own life to the commandments of God.
The promise attached to purity of heart is especially significant: quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt — for they shall see God. The whole movement of the Gospel reaches towards the Beatific Vision already contemplated in the Epistle. Christ describes the transformation of human character necessary for those who hope to possess Him eternally.
For this reason the Beatitudes cannot safely be reduced to an agreeable catalogue of charitable dispositions. They confront the actual disorder of fallen human nature. Pride resists humility; anger resists meekness; sensuality resists purity; selfishness resists mercy; cowardice recoils from persecution. The saints did not escape these struggles simply by possessing exceptional temperaments. They became holy through grace, penance, the practice of virtue and fidelity to the duties imposed upon them by God.
The Gospel also prevents a misunderstanding sometimes encountered among those attracted to the traditional rites. An attachment to orthodox doctrine, reverent worship and ecclesiastical discipline is of immense importance, but it cannot excuse a refusal to practise the virtues taught by Christ. A Catholic may defend the Mass of his forefathers and still struggle with pride, malice, bitterness or a lack of charity. The remedy is not to surrender the Church’s liturgical inheritance, but to allow its supernatural purpose to bear fruit in the soul. The saints did not achieve holiness by possessing correct opinions about sacred ceremonies. They worshipped God in truth and permitted that worship to transform their lives.
The Offertory returns to the condition of those who have already passed through death: Justorum animae in manu Dei sunt — the souls of the just are in the hand of God. The text, taken from the Book of Wisdom, continues by observing that the foolish considered them dead, whereas they are in peace. It is a magnificent expression of the difference between appearances and reality. The world sees the apparent destruction of the body and the end of earthly activity. Faith perceives the continued existence of the soul and the promises of God concerning eternal life.
The souls of the blessed already possess heavenly glory, although the final resurrection of their bodies remains to be accomplished. Christian salvation is not ultimately the liberation of a soul from an unwanted body. The whole human person has been redeemed, and the resurrection of the flesh belongs to the definitive victory of Christ. The same bodies that laboured, suffered, prayed and performed works of charity will, by divine power, be raised and glorified. The Church honours the relics of the saints because the bodies of the just were temples of the Holy Ghost and await this promised resurrection.
The Secret of the Mass asks that the gifts offered in honour of God’s just ones may be pleasing to Him and profitable for our salvation. The theological order remains entirely clear. The saints are honoured within the offering of the Holy Sacrifice, but the Sacrifice itself is offered to God. The priest does not offer a separate sacrifice to the saints, nor does he offer the Eucharist as an act of thanksgiving directed principally towards them. The one Sacrifice of Calvary, made sacramentally present upon the altar, is the source of their sanctity and the foundation of all Christian worship.
Monsignor Nicholas Gihr, in his great commentary The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, gives particular attention to the presence of the saints within the prayers of the Roman Canon. His treatment helps us recognise that the communion of saints is not a doctrine brought into the liturgy only upon particular feast days. It belongs to the habitual language of the Church’s most solemn prayer.¹⁰
In the Communicantes, the priest proclaims communion with the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles and the martyrs named in the Canon. Later, in the Nobis quoque peccatoribus, he asks that sinners may be admitted into the company of the saints. Between these prayers, the Memento etiam commends the faithful departed to divine mercy. The Roman Canon thus manifests the Church’s unity across the apparent separation of death: the blessed already reigning with Christ, the departed for whom suffrages are offered, and the faithful still labouring upon earth.
The Eucharistic Sacrifice remains the centre of this communion because Christ Himself is its Head. The prayers of the saints draw their efficacy from Him; the souls in Purgatory are assisted through His merits; and the faithful receive the grace necessary for perseverance through His sacramental gifts. At every Mass the Church on earth worships in union with the heavenly court. All Saints makes us particularly conscious of a truth that is present whenever the Roman Canon is offered.
The Divine Office surrounds the feast with an even fuller expression of this heavenly communion. In the older Roman Breviary, Matins retains its three nocturns and nine lessons, while the antiphons of Vespers and Lauds draw repeatedly upon the Apocalypse. The antiphon Vidi turbam magnam, quam dinumerare nemo poterat — I saw a great multitude which no man could number — places the vision of St John directly upon the lips of the praying Church. The psalmody is thereby interpreted in the light of the heavenly kingdom.
The ancient Office also preserves the hymn Placare, Christe, servulis, whose earlier form, Christe, Redemptor omnium, is traditionally associated with Rabanus Maurus. The familiar Roman text reflects the hymn revisions of the seventeenth century under Urban VIII. Its successive invocations address Christ and implore the assistance of Our Lady, the angelic orders, Apostles, prophets, martyrs, confessors, virgins and holy solitaries. The hymn has the breadth of a great ecclesiastical procession. Rank after rank of the heavenly court is brought before the faithful, while the Church asks to be received at last into their company.¹¹
An important feature of the older feast is its octave. The celebration does not conclude with Second Vespers on 1 November. Its prayers and commemorations continue through the following days, reaching their completion on 8 November. This extended observance gives the faithful time to contemplate what cannot adequately be absorbed in a single celebration. The saints are not honoured and then forgotten. Their intercession accompanies the Church’s prayer throughout the week, while the repetition of the festal texts deepens the impression of their heavenly happiness.
The suppression of the vigil and octave in the mid-twentieth-century simplifications altered the experience of the feast considerably. The essential Catholic doctrines remained unchanged, and the principal Mass texts continued to proclaim them. Nevertheless, something was lost from the inherited arrangement of sacred time. The movement from penitential preparation to solemn rejoicing, followed by eight days of continued celebration, possessed a formative value of its own. The Church’s older calendar allowed important mysteries to occupy time, to interrupt ordinary routines and to become familiar through repeated prayer.
Pius XII, writing in Mediator Dei, explained that the Church’s liturgical cycle is intended to bring the faithful into closer conformity with Christ. He also taught that the feasts of the saints present examples of holiness so that Christians may imitate the virtues of the Redeemer manifested in their lives. The purpose of the calendar is therefore spiritual formation. Its arrangements matter because they assist the faithful in acquiring a supernatural understanding of existence. The loss of an octave is not a change in dogma, but neither is it without consequence for the manner in which the Faith is experienced and transmitted.¹²
St Bernard of Clairvaux supplies what may be the most searching commentary upon the whole celebration. In his sermon for All Saints, he asks what earthly praise can possibly add to those whom God has already glorified. They have no need of our admiration to complete their happiness. Their crowns are secure; their reward has been received. Yet their commemoration is of immense benefit to us because it awakens a longing to share their company. Bernard wants the remembrance of the blessed to disturb our complacency, to make heaven desirable and to inspire the effort required of those still travelling towards it.¹³
It is difficult to improve upon that pastoral insight. There is little spiritual profit in treating the saints as remote figures whose extraordinary lives belong to another world. Their histories are instructive precisely because sanctity was accomplished in human circumstances, often under conditions far less favourable than our own. They experienced fatigue, temptation, misunderstanding, illness, disappointment and the demands of ordinary responsibility. Their holiness was not the absence of struggle, but fidelity to grace within it.
Many of the greatest saints never occupied positions of public importance. Their sanctity matured in kitchens, workshops, farms, hospitals, monasteries, family homes and places of persecution. Some were learned theologians; others possessed little formal education. Some died young; others endured long years of infirmity. The Church’s calendar records a small proportion of their names. All Saints honours the innumerable others whose lives remain known to God alone.
This has immediate consequences for the manner in which Catholics should approach their own vocation. Holiness is not reserved to the clergy or religious, nor is it the privilege of those whose circumstances permit lengthy periods of prayer. The father supporting his family, the mother caring for children, the person living alone, the elderly widow, the worker enduring difficult employment and the sick person confined to bed are all called to sanctity according to their state of life. Their ordinary duties become occasions of supernatural merit when undertaken in the state of grace and animated by charity.
The lesson is particularly important for those who have come to regard the recovery of Catholic Tradition primarily as a matter of ecclesiastical controversy. There are serious questions concerning the liturgy, doctrine, authority and the rights of the faithful which demand principled attention. Yet the object of defending the Church’s inheritance is the salvation and sanctification of souls. A restoration that produces greater knowledge of rubrics but little growth in humility, prayer or charity has failed to realise its purpose.
All Saints therefore places the traditional Catholic before an examination of conscience. Do the prayers of the Mass govern the conduct of ordinary life? Does reverence before the altar lead to reverence for the commandments of God? Has the contemplation of the saints made heaven more desirable, or has religious identity become another source of earthly satisfaction and personal superiority? These questions are not intended to diminish attachment to the traditional liturgy. They express the demands which that liturgy itself makes upon those who assist at it.
The relationship between All Saints and the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed on 2 November adds a final dimension to the Church’s teaching. The white vestments and joyful chants of the first day give way to the black vestments, solemn supplications and Requiem Masses of the second. The Church celebrates those already enjoying the Beatific Vision and then turns to the faithful departed who still require purification. The contrast is deliberate and deeply consoling. Death does not dissolve the bonds of Christian charity, while the distinction between heavenly glory and the purification of Purgatory remains doctrinally necessary.
The Church Triumphant, the Church Suffering and the Church Militant are united in the one Mystical Body of Christ. The blessed intercede for their brethren; the faithful on earth offer prayers, sacrifices and Masses for the departed; and those undergoing purification are assured of their eventual entrance into heavenly glory. The liturgy gives expression to these relationships with a clarity seldom achieved by religious sentiment alone.
For Catholic families, the consequences should be practical. As Nuntiatoria has emphasised in its recent reflections upon the domestic Church, the sacred calendar ought to shape the life of the household. All Saints should be observed as a genuine festival, with attendance at Mass, thanksgiving, prayer and appropriate celebration. Children should become familiar with the names and lives of the saints, learning to regard them as friends and intercessors rather than distant figures in religious pictures. The following day should bring remembrance of the dead, the offering of Requiem Masses and prayers for the Holy Souls. In this manner the Church’s doctrines become part of the ordinary habits through which Catholic life is sustained.¹⁴
The same principle applies to the solitary faithful, the elderly and those unable to assist at Mass in person. A Catholic prevented by illness or distance from attending the sacred rites may still unite himself spiritually to the Holy Sacrifice, recite the Litany of the Saints, pray the Rosary, read the Epistle and Gospel, and invoke the assistance of the heavenly court. The communion of saints is not restricted to those whose circumstances permit participation in every outward observance.
We should remember, moreover, that All Saints concerns a reality greater than the present happiness of departed souls. The final resurrection, the Last Judgement and the consummation of the heavenly Jerusalem remain before us. The saints already possess God, but the history of Redemption has not yet reached its ultimate visible completion. Christ will come again in glory, the dead shall rise, and the justice and mercy of God shall be manifested before all creation. The solemnity directs our hope towards that final victory, when the redeemed shall glorify God in their resurrected bodies and the divine purpose for mankind shall be fully accomplished.
The traditional Roman liturgy brings these immense doctrines within the reach of ordinary worshippers. A person may know little of the historical development of the feast or the writings of the great commentators and yet receive a profound theological education simply by attending carefully to its prayers. The Introit teaches him to rejoice in God. The Epistle shows him the multitude before the throne. The Gospel reveals the virtues of the blessed. The Offertory reminds him that the just are held securely in the hand of God. The Roman Canon places him in communion with the saints, while the Communion antiphon directs his heart towards the vision of the divine countenance.
And at the centre of it all stands the altar, where the Sacrifice by which heaven was opened is made sacramentally present. The saints have been saved through that Sacrifice. The faithful are sanctified through its fruits. The whole Church, on earth and in heaven, belongs to the Lord who offered Himself for her Redemption.
There is a certain temptation to regard heaven as a consolation reserved for the conclusion of earthly life, something to be considered more seriously when age or illness makes death seem near. The Church’s celebration of All Saints corrects that habit. Heaven is the end for which we exist, and the Christian life must be ordered towards it from the beginning. Our choices, duties, sacrifices, relationships and use of time acquire their true significance in the light of eternity. The saints have already arrived at the destination towards which we profess to travel.
St Bernard understood the effect that their remembrance ought to have upon us. It should awaken desire, strengthen perseverance and make the sacrifices required by fidelity appear in their proper proportion. The happiness of the saints is no longer a matter of promise alone. It is a reality possessed by an innumerable multitude, whose members continue to love and intercede for those who remain on pilgrimage.
The Postcommunion of the Mass makes a fitting conclusion: Da, quaesumus, Domine, fidelibus populis omnium Sanctorum semper veneratione laetari: et eorum perpetua supplicatione muniri. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that Thy faithful people may always rejoice in the veneration of all Thy saints and be strengthened by their perpetual intercession.
It is a modest petition beside the splendour of the heavenly vision, but it contains everything necessary for those still engaged in the Christian struggle. We ask to rejoice in the saints, to benefit from their prayers and to remain faithful until we may join them.
The church bells will cease ringing, the white vestments will be put away, and the solemnity will pass into the ordinary course of the year. The company before the throne of the Lamb will remain. Among them are the great saints whose names have been honoured for centuries, and innumerable others whose fidelity was known only to God.
They were once where we are now.
By the grace of God, we may one day be where they are.
- Francis Mershman, “All Saints’ Day,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907).
- Francis X. Weiser, S.J., Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, “Feast of All Saints” (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958).
- Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, The Sacramentary (Liber Sacramentorum): Historical and Liturgical Notes on the Roman Missal, vol. 5 (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1930), November 1.
- Gregory DiPippo, “The Vigil of All Saints,” New Liturgical Movement, 31 October 2025.
- Nuntiatoria, “Ordo w/c 25.10.26”, 23 October 2026; Missale Romanum, “In Festo Omnium Sanctorum,” 1 November.
- Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, vol. 15, Time After Pentecost, “November 1: Feast of All Saints” (English translation by the Benedictines of Stanbrook).
- St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplementum, q. 72, aa. 1–3.
- Council of Trent, Session XXV, “On the Invocation, Veneration, and Relics of Saints, and on Sacred Images”, 3 December 1563.
- St Leo the Great, Sermon 95: A Homily on the Beatitudes.
- Nicholas Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Dogmatically, Liturgically and Ascetically Explained, 3rd ed. (St Louis: B. Herder, 1908), commentary on the Roman Canon.
- Breviarium Romanum, “Placare, Christe, servulis,” Hymn for All Saints.
- Pius XII, Mediator Dei, 20 November 1947, §§150–170.
- St Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon for All Saints, in The Office of Readings, Opera Omnia, Cistercian edition, vol. 5 (1968), 364–368.
- Nuntiatoria, “The Domestic Church: A Home with Room for Heaven — Preparing for All Saints and All Souls”, 23 October 2026; “Christ Must Reign at Home”, 23 October 2026.
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