SOLEMNITY OF ALL SAINTS
November 1st

Revelation 7:2-4.9-14

Commentary of Fr. Fernando Armellini

A good feast to all, sisters and brothers. Today is the feast of all saints. In the past the saints have enjoyed enormous popularity. Today it is decreasing, but remember that in the past, in our churches there were statues and altars of saints everywhere; and they were more resorted to, than to God because God was far away, a bit inaccessible while the saints had lived in this world, they had had the same life experience, they had faced our problems and our difficulties and therefore they understood us better. We resorted to them who then acted as intermediaries of a God considered a bit oblivious to our problems. It was forgotten that God the Son had come into this world to have our same life experience. Today those who pray go directly to God because in this dialogue with Him we can understand how He sees our reality and we receive his light to live as He wants us to live our lives in this world.

In the past, becoming a saint was very complicated because first of all you should be dead to be already in heaven; there were even people considered saints, especially if there were rumours that they performed miracles. Therefore, to be canonized, that is, declared officially saints, they had to have practiced heroically Christian life and virtues; and also, that some prodigious gestures be attributed to them. And if things are like this, we must conclude that the saints in the Church are something very rare. So, we wonder if this is the case, who are we celebrating today? To those who are in heaven and we admire their heroism waiting that on their feast they grant us some grace? NO. Things are not like that.

Let’s go back to our history, to our origins. At first we were called by the Jews and by the pagans in a derogatory way: ‘the Galileans,’ ‘the Nazarenes’ and ‘the Christians’ which was a derogatory term. It indicated that group of people who followed an anointed by the Lord, a Messiah who had ended up on the cross, condemned by the religious authorities. But among ourselves we did not call ourselves Christians; we called each other ‘the brothers,’ ‘The believers,’ ‘the disciples of the Lord,’ ‘those of the way’ who followed the path travelled by Jesus of Nazareth. We called ourselves “the perfect ones.” And then ‘the saints.’ That’s what we called ourselves at the beginning of our history. In fact, when Paul writes his letters, he always addresses them “to the saints,” to the saints who are in Philippi, to the saints who are in Colossae, to the saints who are in Rome. He was not writing to the saints who are in heaven but to specific people who lived in Ephesus, in Corinth, in Colossae. These were the saints.

We will have to return to this language to become aware of what it means to belong to a community that is called to be holy. And holy means removed from a context that is pagan, not because we live outside the world; we live in the world, but with different criteria that are no longer those of the pagans and what does this different life consist of? It is that of those who welcomed the beatitudes, preached and embodied by Jesus of Nazareth. The ‘holy’ person, the one whom God considers successful, who is fully realized is the one whose identity is of a son or daughter of God. Saint, therefore, is the one who welcomes and commits to living the proposal of man made by Jesus of Nazareth, that is, being a lamb that follows the Lamb who came to give his life.

Today we will not comment on the Gospel text that presents the Beatitudes embodied by Jesus of Nazareth, he is the ‘saint.’ Today we will comment on the passage from Revelation in which we are made to contemplate two groups of saints; in the second one we will also be there. In the first group there are many, 144,000. Who are these brothers and sisters of ours? Let’s listen:

“Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.”

The seer finds himself as if he were in front of a great plain that indicates the whole earth; he sees four angels that they are in the four corners, that is, the four cardinal points that are holding back the winds; if they let the winds free, they would destroy the earth. And there is a fifth angel rising from the east, which is where the light comes from telling these angels to stop. First God wants his seal to be imprinted on his servants because whoever does not wear this seal will be swept away by the wind. What is he saying?

Let’s try to understand the symbolisms. The seal is the symbol of belonging, indicates who is the owner of an object, even a person, also his slaves. That seal was a marker and if a person escaped, when they found him or her they would immediately recognise who was the owner … “you belong to such a man ” Also objects were marked. The moulds found in the handles of the jars are famous. Archaeologists found about 2000 where four Hebrew letters are written: ‘lamele’ the jars belonged to the king. The one that bears someone’s stamp is therefore their property.

We find this image of the seal in both the Old and New Testaments. It is beautiful what the Song of Songs says where the wife says to the husband: “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm” (Song 8:6). ‘You belong to me; you cannot have lovers because you are mine.”’ She has the seal in the heart from where originates all thoughts, all emotions, all choices; and on the arm: all your actions must be done in harmony with me because you belong to me.’ We find this image also in the New Testament and the first in which God has imprinted his seal is Jesus of Nazareth who says: “The son of man on whom God the Father has put his seal.” That is, everything that Jesus does, says, thinks is in perfect harmony with the One to whom he belongs, the heavenly Father.

The believer also bears a seal, a seal of belonging. At baptism, you change ownership; you no longer belong to the world; you no longer belong to Satan; now you belong to Christ. There was a change of ownership. The letter to the Ephesians says of Christians: “You have received the seal of the Holy Spirit, which is the divine life.” Also in the letter to the Ephesians: “Do not sadden the Holy Spirit of God with which you were sealed.” And in the Book of Revelation it is said that even the wicked bear not a seal, but a mark, an imprint -‘harakma’ – in Greek and it is the mark of the beast. A kind of seal that the wicked also carry. The angel, the fifth angel comes to put the seal of the elect; it is a seal, therefore, that is printed on the forehead of those who do not belong to the pagan world, they do not worship idols but the Lord. Then we will see who are the ones who are marked.

We remember that in Jewish tradition to seal meant to make the sign of the ‘tau’, the last letter of the alphabet that in ancient Hebrew spelling was shaped like a cross. So, who are they? We are given the number of this first group that is sealed and recognized as those who belong to the Lord: they are 144,000; the number is not arithmetic, it is not quantitative but qualitative. It is an allegorical number: it is 12 (indicating the people of Israel) x 12, squared, and then it has grown to infinity: thousand-fold. It is the people of God, it is us, who started with this first nucleus, which is the people of Israel.

These are the ones who represent these 144,000; they are the people of Israel, the Israelites who throughout history have been inserted into God’s plan, they have not opposed the service of the project that the Lord wanted to carry out in the world; they are the servants of the Lord and those who prepared the coming of God’s Messiah: the patriarchs, the prophets, and then they are the ones who recognized him as the Messiah of God when he arrived: the Baptist, Mary, Joseph, the apostles and the Jewish group that constituted the first Christian community; they understood what the Lord’s design was on humanity and have collaborated in the realization of this project of God.

Those who did not enter this project of the Lord because for some reason they did not understand it, it is as if they were later blown away by the winds of history; they will remain on the margins of God’s history, in the history that remains, that is not erased. Let’s understand well, it is not the people who are dragged away or rejected by the Lord. NO, but they are your choices that were not in tune with God’s plan; will not affect the future world, to the one that remains.

This is the first truth: God’s plan was realized beginning with Israel who is the mother of the Christian community. These 144,000 indicate the totality of faithful Israelites that continues today in the church, which in fact Paul calls ‘the Israel of God,’ there is no break, there is a continuity of this original group represented for the 144,000 who have put themselves at the service of God’s project and this group now continues in the Christian community. Therefore, Israel is the mother of the Christian community, these 144,000 are the Israelites of each tribe who have prepared the birth of the Church, are those who actively even perhaps without having full awareness have generated the new people of God.

Let’s remember how John introduces us to the last words of Jesus on Calvary when he presents that wonderful scene in which the mother is at the foot of the cross and also the beloved disciple. The mother is Israel and the beloved disciple is the Christian community. But, at that moment, these two groups reject each other, Mother Israel excommunicates this Christian community as heretic. And the Christian community rejected Israel, they felt rejected. The Evangelist John puts in the mouth of the dying Jesus these words: he says to his mother Israel “this community is your daughter”; and to the beloved disciple who represents the Christian community he says, “Remember that Israel is your mother.”

And now the second group enters the scene and we must contemplate it well because we are also in this group:

“After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!”

After the 144,000 an innumerable multitude enters the scene. It does not say that it is an exorbitant number, says that it cannot be counted because there are no numbers to define it and they come from four elements: from each nation, race, people and language. The number 4 indicates the four cardinal points, the extent of the entire earth. This immense crowd is made up of all the men and women who are on earth, without any distinction. This second group represents all the saved of all peoples and of all times. What does the term ‘saved’ mean? Let’s pay attention, not just those in heaven; the author of the Book of Revelation is speaking to us, we are those ‘saved.’ They are all those who have not allowed themselves to be corrupted by the beast, they have not led a life marked by attachment and worship to idols but those who have received in baptism the seal of belonging to Christ, therefore, the author of the book of Revelation describes who we are and how important we are.

Let us now see how this multitude of saints is presented, it is we who have accepted the invitation to enter this new world, the kingdom of God.

“They were standing”; the symbolism is that it is we, the risen ones. We have received a life that is untouched by biological death and our life is that of the resurrected. This symbolism of standing must be present in our liturgies; he is not introducing those who are standing in paradise, it is the Christian community that gives this sign. He who is standing lives. The Council of Nicaea in 325, in canon 20, forbade kneeling during the eucharistic celebration of the Lord’s day because Christians are the resurrected ones; then the devotion of kneeling entered. We must return to this sign of remaining standing.
The second sign is the white robe. White is the symbol of light: “You are the light of the world” said Jesus, not because we shine with a light of ours, but it is the light of Christ that passes through us; and therefore, it is a signed dress that is given to us, it is the baptismal dress and it must be worn uncontaminated; you are a new creature, always present yourself with the white dress. This designer dress should be recognized immediately for all who come to us because it is the garment of Christ. Paul says in the letter to the Galatians: “You are all children of God because those who have been baptized have put on Christ.”
The third characteristic of this group, I repeat, is us: we have palms in our hands. The palm is a sign of the oasis, of fertility, of life and later it has also become the symbol of victory because it is the victory of life in a barren desert; the palm grows in a barren land.

The fourth characteristic of this immense crowd: They are those who praise the Lord. When is the person fully human? When we praise the Lord, when we become aware of our own identity, that is, when we question the meaning of our existence, the meaning of everything created. Let’s try to imagine creation without man, nothing would make sense; all creation exists for this self-conscious creature to realize the reason why everything exists and praise the Lord, thank Him for being involved in his plan of love. He is holy who understands all this and praises the Lord. He who does not praise the Lord has not yet understood the reason for being in this world.

Today there is talk of the fading of the sacred, but cult has not disappeared. Today, praise is offered for other things, for idols like reason, science, progress, which are excellent things. But, Woe if they are worshiped as if they were God! … Woe if they are the ones who dictate the moral choices! Today we can find more refined idols, but still they always remain idols. Thank God there are still many, an immense crowd, who have opened their eyes to the deceptions of our time, and who pay homage only to the true living God their due worship and join this crowd of the redeemed.
Now we are told who are those who belong to this immense crowd:

“Then one of the elders asked me, ‘These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?’ I answered, ‘Sir, you know.’ And he said, ‘These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

The author of the Book of Revelation wants to make us understand well who are those who belong to this immense crowd and he does it with a literary artifice, with a question asked by an old man, one of the 24 who are sitting around God’s throne, a question that he asks the seer. He asks: These people dressed in white Who are they and where do they come from? The seer responds: “Sir, you know.” And then the old man explains.

Who is this old man? Who do those 24 elders around the throne of God represent? They represent those who in our Christian communities have internalized the message of the gospel and they communicate it to the brothers with the word and above all with a life that embodies this gospel. Each of our communities could give a name to one of these elders who are sitting around the throne of God and that now explains to us who are those who belong to this immense crowd.

The old man says: “They are those who come from the great tribulation.” What does it mean? Maybe right away we think of those who are in heaven, those who have suffered great tribulations in life or have been victims of the persecution of Diocletian or Domitian and now are in paradise. NO. The verb is in the present: ‘Those who come,’ who start from the great tribulation.

What is the great tribulation? If instead of tribulation we put ‘they come from the great passion of love,’ we immediately understand what the old man refers to: They are those who today emerge from the great passion of love, which is that of Christ who has given his life. This immense crowd is made up of all those who live this choice of love made by Jesus of Nazareth. And then “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” And they have become beautifully white, luminous. The comparison is clearly forced: Wash the garments in the blood of the Lamb to make them white, but the symbolism is very clear. Blood is the symbol of a life given, that is that of Christ. Washing one’s garments, that is, one’s own choice of life so that it becomes a transparency of the light of Christ and of his love; to do this you have to wash them in her blood that is in his life given.

When one looks at the life of Christ, one can only be speechless and say that it is a beautiful life, a successful life. The immense crowd is made up of all who wear this splendid cloth which is the garment of unconditional love that gives life even for the enemy, just as the life of Christ was. In this feast we have been invited to contemplate this family of saints, of those who live inspired by this passion of love so great which is that of Christ.

I wish you all a good feast.

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