Solemnity of All Saints [1 November 2025]

May God bless us and may the Virgin Mary protect us. The Solemnity of All Saints is an important occasion to reflect on our Christian vocation: through Baptism, we are all called to be 'blessed', that is, on the path towards the joy of eternal Love.

First Reading from the Book of Revelation of Saint John the Apostle (7:2-4, 9-14)

In Revelation, John recounts a mystical vision he received in Patmos, which is to be interpreted symbolically rather than literally. He sees an angel and an immense crowd, composed of two distinct groups: The 144,000 baptised, marked with the seal of the living God, represent the faithful believers, contemporaries of John, persecuted by the emperor Domitian. They are the servants of God, protected and consecrated, the baptised people who bear witness to their faith despite persecution. The innumerable crowd, from every nation, tribe, people and language, dressed in white, with palm branches in their hands and standing before the Throne and the Lamb, represents humanity saved thanks to the faith and sufferings of the baptised. Their standing position symbolises resurrection, their white robes purification, and their palm branches victory. The central message is that the suffering of the faithful brings about the salvation of others: the trials of the persecuted become a means of redemption for humanity, in continuity with the theme of the suffering servant of Isaiah and Zechariah. John uses symbolic and coded language, typical of the Apocalypse, to secretly communicate with persecuted believers and encourage them to persevere in their faith without being discovered by the Roman authorities. The text therefore invites perseverance: even if evil seems to triumph, the heavenly Father and Christ have already won, and the faithful, though small and oppressed, share in this victory. Baptism is thus perceived as a protective seal, comparable to the mark of Roman soldiers. This text, with its mystical and prophetic language, reveals that the victory of the poor and the little ones is not revenge, but a manifestation of God's triumph over the forces of evil, bringing salvation and hope to all humanity, thanks to the faithful perseverance of the righteous.

Responsorial Psalm (23/24)

This psalm takes us to the Temple of Jerusalem, a holy place built on high. A gigantic procession arrives at the gates of the Temple. Two alternating choirs sing in dialogue: 'Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who can stand in his holy place?" The biblical references in this psalm are Isaiah (chapter 33), which compares God to a consuming fire, asking who can bear to look upon him. The question is rhetorical: we cannot bear God on our own, but he draws near to man, and the psalm celebrates the discovery of the chosen people: God is holy and transcendent, but also always close to man. Today, this psalm resounds on All Saints' Day with the song of the angels inviting us to join in this symphony of praise to God: 'with all the angels of heaven, we want to sing to you'. The necessary condition for standing before God is well expressed here: only those with a pure heart, innocent hands, who do not offer their souls to idols. It is not a question of moral merit: the people are admitted when they have faith, that is, total trust in the one God, and decisively reject all forms of idolatry. Literally, 'he has not lifted his soul to empty gods', that is, he does not pray to idols, while raising one's eyes corresponds to praying and recognising God. The psalm insists on a pure heart and innocent hands. The heart is pure when it is totally turned towards God, without impurity, that is, without mixing the true and the false, God and idols. Hands are innocent when they have not offered sacrifices or prayed to false gods. The parallelism between heart and hands emphasises that inner purity and concrete physical action must go together. The psalm recalls the struggle of the prophets because Israel had to fight idolatry from the exodus from Egypt (golden calf) to the Exile and beyond, and the psalm reaffirms fidelity to the one God as a condition for standing before Him. "Behold, this is the generation that seeks your face, God of Jacob." Seeking God's face is an expression used for courtiers admitted into the king's presence and indicates that God is the only true King and that faithfulness to Him allows one to receive the blessing promised to the patriarchs. From this flow the concrete consequences of faithfulness: the man with a pure heart knows no hatred; the man with innocent hands does no evil; on the contrary, he obtains justice from God by living in accordance with the divine plan because every life has a mission and every true child of God has a positive impact on society. Also evident in this psalm is the connection to the Beatitudes of the Gospel: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness... Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."  "Behold, this is the generation that seeks him, that seeks your face, God of Jacob": is this not a simple definition of poverty of heart, a fundamental condition for entering the Kingdom of Heaven?

Second Reading from the First Letter of Saint John the Apostle (3:1-3)

 "Beloved, see what great love the Father has given us": the urgency of opening our eyes. St John invites believers to "see", that is, to contemplate with the eyes of the heart, because the gaze of the heart is the key to faith. Indeed, the whole of human history is an education of the gaze. According to the prophets, the tragedy of man is precisely "having eyes and not seeing". What we need to learn to see is God’s love and “his plan of salvation” (cf. Eph 1:3-10) for humanity. The entire Bible insists on this: to see well is to recognise the face of God, while a distorted gaze leads to falsehood. The example of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden shows how sin arises from a distorted gaze. Humanity, listening to the serpent, loses sight of the tree of life and focuses its gaze on the forbidden tree: this is the beginning of inner disorder. The gaze becomes seduced, deceived, and when "their eyes were opened," humans did not see the promised divinity, but their nakedness, their poverty and fragility. In opposition to this deceived gaze, John invites us to look with our hearts into the truth: 'Beloved, see what great love the Father has given us'. God is not jealous of man — as the serpent had insinuated — but loves him and wants him as his son. John's entire message is summed up in this revelation: 'God is love'. True life consists in never doubting this love; knowing God, as Jesus says in John's Gospel (17:3), is eternal life. God's plan, revealed by John and Paul, is a "benevolent plan, a plan of salvation": to make humanity in Christ, the Son par excellence, of whom we are the members, one body. Through Baptism, we are grafted onto Christ and are truly children of God, clothed in Him. The Holy Spirit makes us recognise God as Father, placing in our hearts the filial prayer: 'Abba, Father!'. However, the world does not yet know God because it has not opened its eyes. Only those who believe can understand the truth of divine love; for others, it seems incomprehensible or even scandalous. It is up to believers to bear witness to this love with their words and their lives, so that non-believers may, in turn, open their eyes and recognise God as Father. At the end of time, when the Son of God appears, humanity will be transformed in his image: man will rediscover the pure gaze he had lost at the beginning. Thus resounds Christ's desire to the Samaritan woman (4:1-42): "If you knew the gift of God!" An ever-present invitation to open our eyes to recognise the love that saves.

From the Gospel according to Matthew (5:1-12a)

Jesus proclaims: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted": it is the gift of tears. This beatitude, seemingly paradoxical, does not exalt pain but transforms it into a path of grace and hope. Jesus, who always sought to heal and console, does not invite us to take pleasure in suffering, but encourages us not to be discouraged in trials and to remain faithful in our tears, because those who suffer are already on the way to the Kingdom. The term "blessed" in the original biblical text does not indicate good fortune, but a call to persevere: it means "on the march", "take courage, keep pace, walk". Tears, then, are not an evil to be endured, but can become a place of encounter with God. There are beneficial tears, such as those of Peter's repentance, where God's mercy is experienced, or those that arise from compassion for the suffering of others, a sign that the heart of stone is becoming a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). Even tears shed in the face of the harshness of the world participate in divine compassion: they announce that the messianic time has come, when the promised consolation becomes reality. The first beatitude, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven', encompasses all the others and reveals their secret. Evangelical poverty is not material poverty, but openness of heart: the poor (anawim) are those who are not self-sufficient, who are neither proud nor self-reliant, but expect everything from God. They are the humble, the little ones, those who have "bent backs" before the Lord. As in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, only those who recognise their own poverty can receive salvation. The poor in spirit live in total trust in God, receive everything as a gift, and pray with simplicity: "Lord, have mercy." From this inner attitude spring all the other beatitudes: mercy, meekness, peace, thirst for justice — all are fruits of the Spirit, received and not conquered. To be poor in spirit means to believe that only God fills, and that true riches are not possessions, power or knowledge, but the presence of God in a humble heart. This is why Jesus proclaims a future and paradoxical happiness: "Blessed are the poor," that is, soon you will be envied, because God will fill your emptiness with his divine riches. The beatitudes, therefore, are not moral rules but good news: they announce that God's gaze is different from that of men. Where the world sees failure — poverty, tears, persecution — God sees the raw material of his Kingdom. Jesus teaches us to look at ourselves and others with the eyes of God, to discover the presence of the Kingdom where we would never have suspected it. True happiness therefore comes from a purified gaze and from accepted weakness, which become places of grace. Those who weep, those who are poor in spirit, those who seek justice and peace, already experience the promised consolation: the joy of children who know and feel loved by the Father. As Ezekiel reminds us, on the day of judgement, those who have wept over the evil in the world will be recognised (Ezekiel 9:4): their tears are therefore already a sign of the Kingdom to come.

• +Giovanni D'Ercole