Fr. Roger J. Landry

Saint Paul Center, Steubenville, Ohio

Deacon Conference on “Scripture, the Soul of Sacred Theology: The Gospel of Matthew”

All Saints Day 2025

November 1, 2025

Rev 7:2-4.9-14, Ps 24, 1 Jn 3:1-3, Mt 5:1-12

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• Today on this great solemnity, we first celebrate the saints. We celebrate the great and famous saints we know about, like the holy deacons Saints Stephen, Philip, Lawrence, Ephrem, Francis of Assisi, Vincent of Zaragoza, Romanos, Alcuin, and Francis di Paola. We celebrate also the countless quiet saints, the “saints next door,” among whom we pray are numbered our deceased loved ones and those who passed on to us the gift of the faith, who died in the love of the Lord and now live in His love. The saints are the multitude who have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” as we heard in today’s first reading, and brought those white baptismal garments “unstained into the everlasting life of heaven,” like they were instructed to do on the day of their baptism. These are the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation,” who have not just been called “children of God” through baptism, as St. John told us in today’s second reading, but have lived as children of God throughout their lives, seeking to love God with all their mind, heart, soul and strength and to love their neighbor as Christ loved them. They are the ones who, as we prayed in the Psalm, have longed to see God’s face, who, by God’s mercy, had sinless hands, pure hearts, and desires not for vain things but for the things of God. These are the ones who have ascended “the mountain of the Lord,” the eternal Jerusalem, and who “stand in his holy place.” These are the ones who are singing today in that holy place the beautiful endless song glimpsed in the passage from Revelation, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”


• But All Saints Day is not just about celebrating those who have lived truly successful lives, who have received and responded to the love of God and made the eternal Hall of Fame. It’s also meant, in having us focus on them, to spur us to imitate them so that one day November 1 will in the future be our day, too. As the traditional American Gospel hymn intones, “O Lord, I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in.” St. John Paul II reminded us as we began the third Christian millennium that everything the Church does is meant to help us become holy, to help us respond to what the Second Vatican Council called the “universal call to holiness.” St. John Paul II wrote, “Since Baptism is a true entry into the holiness of God through incorporation into Christ and the indwelling of his Spirit, it would be a contradiction to settle for a life of mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethic and a shallow religiosity. To ask catechumens: ‘Do you wish to receive Baptism?’ means at the same time to ask them: ‘Do you wish to become holy?’ It means to set before them the radical nature of the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Mt5:48 ).” He continued, “This ideal of perfection must not be misunderstood as if it involved some kind of extraordinary existence, possible only for a few ‘uncommon heroes’ of holiness. … The time has come to re-propose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living: the whole life of the Christian community … must lead in this direction.” On All Saints Day each year the Church indeed reproposes wholeheartedly this high standard of the Christian life, that God calls us not to mediocrity, or minimalism, or shallowness, but to the perfection of love. All Saints Day is meant to inspire us to will the means to that end, to choose the narrow road that leads to life, and to invoke the powerful intercession of the saints so that we will indeed be among the great multitude in white garments who will ascend the Lord’s mountain and fulfill our dignity made in the image and likeness of God who is holy, holy, holy.


• This is a special call for the ministers of the Church. When I preach retreats for priests and seminarians, I normally try to get their attention early by proclaiming emphatically, “God has not called you to be priests.” After a pregnant pause, as I wait for someone to start the chant, “Crucifige eum! Crucifige eum!,” I then add, “He has called you to be a holy priest or no priest at all.” I could say the same thing to each of you: God has not called you just to be a deacon. He’s called you to become a saint as a deacon. The Sacrament of Holy Orders is holy not just because it is ordered to our thrice holy God and the holy things of God, but also because it has the power of sanctification if we’re open to it, if we’re cooperative with the graces. The intensified call of every deacon to holiness is emphasized in the Vatican’s Directory for the Ministry and Life of Deacons, where the Church reminds us: “By the Sacrament of Holy Orders, deacons receive a ‘a new consecration to God’ through which they are ‘anointed by the Holy Spirit and sent by Christ’ to serve God’s people and ‘build up the Body of Christ.’ From this stems the diaconal spiritualitywith its source in what the Second Vatican Council calls ‘the sacramental grace of the diaconate.’ In addition to helping the deacon to fulfil his functions, this also affects his deepest being, imbuing it with a willingness to give his entire self over to the service of the Kingdom of God in the Church. … The deacon is called to live a holy life because he has been sanctified by the Holy Spirit in the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Orders and has been constituted by the same Spirit a minister of Christ’s Church to serve and sanctify mankind.”


• The three-fold service of the deacon — as a minister of the Word, of the altar and of charity — all are meant to sanctify him and make him an instrument for the sanctification of others in the Church. Holiness is the perfection of charity and, as we see in an unforgettable way in the life of the deacon St. Lawrence, deacons, through their care for the poor, for the sick, for the homebound and those in nursing homes, for the imprisoned, are able to grow in their conformity to Christ the Deacon who called all of us, but in a particular deacons, to become great through serving the rest in imitation of him who came to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. Likewise it’s straightforward to grasp how service at the altar is meant to sanctify. As the Directory for the Ministry and Life of Deacons underlines, “The liturgy is the source of grace and sanctification. Its efficacy derives from Christ the Redeemer and does not depend on the holiness of the minister. This certainty should cause the deacon to grow in humility since he can never compromise the salvific work of Christ. At the same time it should inspire him to holiness of life so that he may be a worthy minister of the liturgy.” To be able to serve the Eucharistic Lord Jesus so intimately, to hold aloft the chalice of his Precious Blood one drop of which is enough to save the whole world, to be able to receive the Lord first after the priest and then have the awesome privilege to hold him in his hands and give him — give God — to others is one of the greatest gifts any human being can have. As long as it doesn’t become routine, as long as faith is maintained and his first love remains ardent, we’re bound to become more and more like the Lord Jesus whom we adore, receive, handle and give to others, in imitation of the way Mary’s and Joseph’s holiness grew through their daily interaction with Jesus in Bethlehem, Egypt and Nazareth.


• But within this Deacons Conference on Scripture as the Soul of Sacred Theology, I would like to spend more time pondering the connection between the Word of God and Christian and ministerial holiness. This morning in the Vatican, Pope Leo proclaimed St. John Henry Newman the 38^th Doctor of the Church and co-patron, with St. Thomas Aquinas, of the Church’s educational mission. In a homily the future Cardinal entitled, “Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness,” he said, “The great end of all revelation is holiness. The Word of God is given us, not to make us learned, but to make us holy.” Scripture is meant not just to inform but to transform, to make us more like Jesus, the incarnate Word. That happens when we hear the Word of God as a word-to-be-done. Elsewhere our new ecclesial doctor said, “We cannot understand the Word of God unless we obey it. To read it with a heart of obedience is the way to see its power and light.” And that power and light has a chance to bring us to holiness, happiness and heaven. Newman told us, “The Word of God, when planted within us, is a seed which grows up unto eternal life; it takes root and becomes part of ourselves.” And the holier we become, the more like Christ, like Mary, like the saints, the better we will understand the Word of God and the greater its power and light. Saint John Henry preached, “The pure in heart alone see God, and therefore they alone can interpret His Word aright.” This transformation is what’s meant to occur in the life of everyone in whose hands is p