Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ King of the Universe, Cycle B

Dn 7:13-14
Ps 93:1, 1-2, 5
Rev 1:5-8
Jn 18:33b-37

Does the title “Jesus Christ King of the Universe” seem a bit lofty to you?  Couldn’t it just be “Jesus Christ, the King of Christians or King of Catholics”?  Why is He King of everrrrrything?  It’s like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I am Arthur, King of the Britons… I am your king!” “Well, I didn’t vote for you!”  Why celebrate this feast, why do we honor Him as “king”?  Let us look at a bit of the historical development that established this feast.  This is, of course, the last Sunday of the liturgical year – it is the proverbial “New Year’s Eve” Sunday and we celebrate it with a solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ called “Christ the King”.  This feast day was originally instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI to be celebrated on the last Sunday of October to coincide with the Feast of All Saints Day (November 1).  It was later moved in 1969 by Pope Paul VI to the last Sunday in Ordinary Time to reflect the end of the liturgical year.

The original reasoning behind this feast was to honor Our Lord as King because of growing secularism and nationalism in the world; a world where the “here and now” had started to overrun Christ’s sovereignty in people’s lives.  After the First World War, nations began to regroup and start to rely on themselves more and more – there was a rally to a national identity and naturally one started forgetting about their religious identity.  So the Church instituted this feast to remind us that we are not just citizens of the United States, but first and foremost subjects of the Kingdom of God, of Jesus Christ.  When Pope Paul VI moved the feast to the last Sunday of Ordinary Time, the focus was on the emphasis of the end times:  Jesus Christ will reign supreme as King of the Universe – over all His creation at His Second Coming.  And as our Responsorial Psalm says, The Lord is king, in splendor robed in majesty!  Your throne stands firm from of old; from everlasting you are, O Lord.

Our Gospel reading takes us back to the passion of Jesus as He awaits judgment from Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the region.  The Jews have put Jesus to Pilate and accuse Jesus of making Himself king – a direct threat to Roman rule and for which one would be executed by crucifixion if found guilty.  The dialogue is powerful because they are conversing about the claims of Christ’s kingship.  Jesus declares, My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…but as it is, my kingdom is not here.  Jesus does not declare Himself King in the sense that Pilate would see it – a threat to Caesar.  Jesus claims to be of a kingdom that is beyond this world.  And if someone today were to say to you that they belonged to another kingdom not of this world, wouldn’t you dismiss them and write them off as “loony tunes”?  Is it so crazy for us to believe that we have a kingdom that is beyond this world?  Isn’t that why we are believers called Christians, why we are here today – worshipping God at Church?  Who is your King, who is your Lord and Savior?  And are you – as a professed Christian in this world – a passive bystander watching your life go by, or one that is actively trying to engage the world with your Christian faith and values?  When Jesus says, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over… what feelings does that evoke in you?  This has always been an accusation to me:  I have not been fighting to keep Christ from being handed over.  He is talking about us!! There is a quote from St. John Chrysostom (which is referring to worldly kingdoms but appropriate here to talk about His kingdom on earth): “Here Jesus shows the weakness of kingship among us. He demonstrates that its strength lies in servants.  But that which is above is sufficient of itself. It needs nothing….”  We are His weakness.

This dual citizenship that we have as Christians and as citizens of the United States calls us to live these out.  The idea of separation of Church and State does not mean Church and being Christian is only for Sunday and the rest of your world is on Monday through Saturday.  Your dual citizenship calls you to be informed in your faith, believing in the faith, living and practicing your faith, and bringing your faith to others while being out there in the world, seven days a week!  Governments and nations in the world cannot and should not infringe upon the free expression and practice of our Catholic Christian faith.  Since we ultimately belong to the Kingdom of God before we belong to any nation, our laws must reflect our Christian moral and social teachings.

For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.  Truth, my dear brothers and sisters, does not come from ourselves, but is given to us and revealed to us in God.  By flippantly saying “It’s all relative” or “No one’s perfect” is to deny the very fact and reality that there is objective Truth and there is perfection to which one must strive: the Truth of Jesus Christ and His moral example shown through the ages by the lives of the saints.  This is again a call for us to develop a personal relationship with God and have Him permeate every part of our lives.

At the end of the liturgical year, we honor Christ as King of the Universe.  It is fitting because all of the kingdoms and nations of the world will eventually fall and crumble, but Christ’s will reign supreme and eternally.  The First and Second readings speak of the Son of Man coming down from the clouds and that all of creation will be watching and waiting, worshipping the King of the Universe.  At the end of time as we know it, Christ will come again and the world as we know it will end.  Then there will be a new heavens and a new earth, a Resurrection of our bodies – where perfection of the universe and all creation will eternally forever be reigning with Christ in glory.  The end of the world is only scary for those who have no hope in the Resurrection.  We believe that there will be eternity and that there will be a Resurrection.  Therefore it is good that we are prepared for what will happen: for Christ’s Second Coming and we are looking forward to it.  What I find even more fitting is that at the end of the liturgical year, celebrating the end of time, the following Sunday will begin the season of Advent, the start of the new liturgical year.  And what does Advent celebrate?  Advent celebrates the preparation for the coming of Christ on Christmas.  Therefore, if you are worried that you are not ready for the end of the world, you can start next week by preparing yourself and opening yourself up for Christ’s coming on Christmas.  May Jesus Christ the King of the Universe always reign in our lives and most especially in our hearts.

XXXIII Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Dn 12:1-3
Ps 16:5, 8, 9-10, 11
Heb 10:11-14, 18
Mk 13:24-32


I do not know about you, but I have had one of those weeks.  One of those weeks where everything you see is bad news and everything you hear is about the troubles that people are having: some have to do with family, some with work, and some just generally about horrible tragic accidents.  And it’s not just me, others are experiencing it too.  And I find that different people take the bad news differently.  Many fall into an emotional mess, they fall apart and fall into a dark despair.  Others get angry, they start to blame and curse and just throw a complete fit.  But then there’s another group that despite also experiencing the proportionately same amount of bad news react quite differently.  They are not stoic or completely unaffected, they stutter a little bit – they’re shaken – and then move forward.

The skeptic would say – well they haven’t properly grieved and they are inhumane and are not in touch with their emotions.  While that may be true for some, I think for us as Christians, it is the persistent and ever-deepening relationship with our Lord that keeps us anchored and grounded.  When St. Augustine of Hippo writes the ever-popular statement, “Our hearts are restless, until they rest in you.” I ask what are the causes of that restlessness?  They could come from ourselves and our fickle nature.  It could also arise very much from the storms of daily life.  We must first anchor ourselves in the harbor of Jesus Christ – then we will have little difficulty and struggle in the tempests that blow through our lives.
Our readings today give us a pretty gloomy picture: the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky….  Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake… some shall live forever, others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace.  And you thought Halloween was over!!!!  As we are rounding off the last few weeks of the liturgical year, the lectionary cycle is signaling the “beginning of the end”.  We are celebrating the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – and next week will be the end of the Liturgical Year with the celebration of the end of the world and Christ the King of the Universe!  Notice it’s a celebration and not a depressing moment, because there will be a new heavens and a new earth, but this world must pass away first.

I think it’s fascinating that our liturgical year is shaped this way.  The leaves are falling, things are dying and the days are darkening sooner.  We simultaneously commemorate the end of the created universe and our world with the seasons of fall and winter: the end of life on earth and the end of time.  [Southern Hemisphere excluded]

But however gloomy it gets, however sad it gets with things going badly, we should not be depressed.  Because we know and we believe that there is something beyond.  We know and believe this because God, our Father has revealed this to us since the beginning of time.  The Responsorial Psalm is just so rich our dependence, our reliance on Him and then His ultimate desire for us: O Lord, you are my allotted portion and my cup, you hold fast my lot…with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed…. You will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption…. Our Lord God is always faithful to us and never forgets us.   There's a story that I think is quite fitting for this occasion:

From A Father Who Keeps His Promises – by Dr. Scott Hahn
Everybody felt it: a moment of eerie silence, a low rumble and then the ground began to shake. Buildings swayed and buckled, then collapsed like houses of cards. Less than four minutes later, over thirty thousand were dead from a magnitude 8.2 earthquake that rocked and nearly flattened Armenia in 1989.  

In the muddled chaos, a distress father bolted through the winding streets leading to the school where his son had gone earlier that morning. The man couldn’t stop thinking about the promise he’d given his son many times: “No matter what happens, Armand, I’ll always be there.”
He reached the site where the school had been, but saw only a pile of rubble. He just stood there at first, fighting back tears, and then took off, stumbling over debris, toward the east corner where he knew his son’s classroom had been.

With nothing but his bare hands, he started to dig. He was desperately pulling up bricks and pieces of wall-plaster, while others stood by watching in forlorn disbelief. He heard someone growl, “Forget it, mister. They’re all dead.”

He looked up, flustered, and replied, “You can grumble, or you can help me lift these bricks.” Only a few pitched in, and most of them gave up once their muscles began to ache. But the man couldn’t stop thinking about his son.

He kept digging and digging – for hours … twelve hours … eighteen hours … twenty-four hours … thirty-six hours … Finally, into the thirty-eight hour, he heard a muffled groan from under a piece of wallboard.

He seized the board, pulled it back, and cried, “ARMAND!” From the darkness came a slight shaking voice, “Papa…!?”

Other weak voices began calling out, as the young survivors stirred beneath the still uncleared rubble. Gasps and shouts of bewildered relief came from the few onlookers and parents who remained. They found fourteen of the thirty-three students still alive.

When Armand finally emerged, he tried to help dig, until all his surviving classmates were out. Everybody standing there heard him as he turned to his friends and said, “See, I told you my father wouldn’t forget us.”

The signs of the times give us a bleak outlook.  It is a sign of our mortality, a sign that we do not live forever.  Even more so as we remember our loved ones in this month of November – designated as a special month to pray for all those that have died.  At the end of the world, there will be a final judgment and there will be heaven and hell – an eternal reward or an eternal punishment.  But we have nothing to fear if we hold fast and keep the faith in God.  But I challenge you not to approach your faith in trying to avoid hell, but to approach your faith in a relationship with Jesus Christ.  Your mind tends towards the things that you focus on.

Parents, your children are depending on you in all these things: to be the perfect parent and to be the perfect example.  I don’t know a single parent who is only trying to be mediocre.  But I do know many parents who struggle with trying to be the perfect parent because they did not have the perfect example of parenting growing up.  In this worry, they compensate for this and that and for everything else and in the end, it seems like they are doing worse than their own parents [in-laws tend to remind them frequently of this matter].  Some say do your best and leave the rest up to God.  I say, start with God in your life first – invite Him into your family -- and then do your best with God.  Your children will learn about their relationship with God from YOUR relationship with God.  If your relationship is strong and true, then your children’s will be too.

We do not know what disaster will happen in our lives, when tragedy will strike, or when the end of the world will come.  However, if we trust in Him and keep the faith strong, we will find a safe place, a safe harbor and we’ll be anchoring ourselves to the One who will never forget us or abandon us.

XXXII Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

1Kgs 17:10-16
Ps 146:7,8-9,9-10
Heb 9:24-28
Mk 12:38-44


When I hear these passages about the destitute widows, I struggle.  I struggle with the idea that it seems like God likes to kick people when they are down.  The first reading speaks of the story of the widow and Elijah.  When this story was told to me in Sunday school, I was found it amazing of that there was this jar of flour that never ran out.  [When I got back home from Sunday school, I was disappointed to find that my jar of cookies does run out.]  What one must understand is that this widow and the widows in that time period were not only without a husband, they were beyond destitute and poverty did not even begin to describe their situation.  Without having any marketable skills, nor able to hold property or any sort of job that could sustain her and her son, she basically had nothing. And here comes the great prophet Elijah, a refugee running from a king that is trying to kill him.  Of all the people he could ask for help, he finds a widow about to have her last meal and demands that she give him some food.  It would seem that if this did not provoke an angry or violent reaction from the widow, nothing would.  This was literally the last straw for her.  But she simply makes him aware of the situation and does not hold back her charity or hospitality.  She is resigned to the idea that she will eventually die, whether there is a final meal or not...that’s that.

The same thing with the widow’s might in Mark’s Gospel: she puts her two small coins, pretty much all that she has in the treasury.  She is probably also resigned to dying soon.  The modern person would try to find some other investment: a lottery ticket or some other way to get rich quick and get out of this abject poverty.  The modern ideology is: if you don’t fight for yourself, no one will.  Practicality and pragmatism is the order of the day.  The widow would have done better to invest in some way – at least there would be a return.  But no, she drops it in the treasury [I always imagine it to be like a votive candle].  And resigns herself to whatever the future had in store for her.  What these two widows are emphasizing in their actions is the radical call to discipleship through acts of love and charity – not from excess and unwanted, but from what is the very heart of their existence and essence.

When we hear the critiques Jesus makes about the corrupt Scribes and other corrupt authorities, I cannot help but drift towards making associations with our hierarchy and clergy.  And no, just to be clear I am not making a reference to our bishop, the Holy Father or any other clergymen.  There’s a clear difference now: that our priests take on vows of obedience, chastity and a life of simplicity or poverty in some cases.  In the Old Testament, the sacrifice of animals on the Day of Atonement or any sacrifice for that matter used the blood of these animals to appease and make reparations to God: …the high priest enters each year into the sanctuary with blood that is not his own. That is to say these authorities of old did not sacrifice themselves per se, but offered the blood of animals not their own.  When one offers themselves, others see the authenticity and the genuineness of their actions.  I take on the office of the priesthood, and I hope you all will keep me accountable, by offering myself for you.  When problems run amok it is because folks are spending and sacrificing things that have no value to them.  A sacrifice that doesn’t hurt isn’t much of a sacrifice.  But after Jesus’ passion and death, He introduced the un-bloody sacrifice through the sacrifice of His body and blood.  Every time a priest after the time of Christ offers sacrifice, the priest is reminded and recalls that he is not entering the sanctuary with some other random animals’ blood, but rather he is entering into the person of Jesus Christ and offering himself with and as Christ on the altar.  Every priest that realizes he is offering our Lord Jesus Christ through Him, with Him, and in Him – makes a profound realization of his own finite mortality and unworthiness before God.  Every priest that realizes what an intimate connection he has to Christ, should feel an obligation to change –to be transformed and repent of their sinful lives and return to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Therefore the role of the priest, like the widows in our story, exemplify the fact of giving not for the sake of giving, but giving in such a way that expresses the personal nature of the sacrifice and offering: a gift that “hurts”, as it were, to show how significant, how important, and how necessary it is to offer it.

What does this all mean for us?  How are we going to be able to match this kind of faith these widows had?  And how are we going to enter into the celebration of the Mass with a priest?  As all of you catechumens will be journeying to Christ with us, I want to invite you to take the widow and the priests for your examples.  The widows are an example of how to offer their complete self in total trust and faith that our Lord will provide for them; that we are to give and to give and to give until it hurts and then give some more.  Until our lives are completely emptied out, we will always be cheating Christ of His desire to dwell in us.  As you look to the high priest in the second reading, recall that a priest’s gift and offering involves a sacrifice of self through his personal vows and promises, witness to the Gospel message, and finally a spiritual offering of self in the liturgy and the other sacraments.

How do we proceed? 1.) You must realize that you will never have that kind of faith without first building up the habit of trusting in God with your complete selves so that when the time comes and you are called to it, you can do it in truth faith and dependence on God.  This begins with a daily practice of denying yourself in the little things and realizing what needs to be removed from your lifestyle.  2.)  One must also know that “the habit of trusting in God” presupposes that you actually have a personal relationship with God – that you come here on Sunday not because it is a precept of the Church and a mortal sin not to, but because your gratitude and love for Him obliges you to do so.  From the outside looking inwards, I don’t see God kicking those who are down. I see two beautiful widows fulfilling their vocation of trust and charity with their very lives, rejecting the cotemporary understanding of success and bringing ones’ complete self in union with Christ on the Cross, united in His suffering which was and is unlike any other.

XXXI Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Dt 6:2-6
Ps 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 51
Heb 7:23-28
Mk 12:28b-34

If today’s Gospel sounds a little bit repetitive then you are paying attention.  The first reading and the Gospel reading are usually related to some degree and in cases like these, it’s almost an exact quotation of the scriptures in the Old Testament.  This makes my job a little bit easier because there’s less to cover!!

What is so special about this repeated passage of scripture?  Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.  This is known as the “Shemah!!”, which means “ to hear or listen”.  This prayer and proclamation in the Jewish scriptures is perhaps the most important – most central piece of their faith, and likewise for us too.  These two Great Commandments offer a simple distillation of the Faith: it’s bite size!  But note the following verses instructing further:

Keep repeating them to your children. Recite them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them on your arm as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates. 

Observant Jews will take this to heart and truly follow these instructions, in some cases literally.  They pray this verse in daily morning and evening prayers.  In ancient times they would write the scripture verse on parchment and put it inside little boxes to wear on their foreheads and arms.  In more modern times, one would literally have this verse attached to the doorpost of their houses to remember that the Lord is God, the Lord is one, and that they will love Him with their complete self.

What I find so beautiful about some of these practices is how much the Jewish people tried to live out the faith: to have such a need to live with the Word of God, the Scriptures, and know the importance of God’s sacred word in their lives.  It is not enough with just knowing that God is one and that we should love Him, but rather that knowledge should transform and flow outward into a living faith.  They knew that they were God’s people before they were the people of their conquerors: be it the Babylonians, the Romans, the Greeks, or anyone else.  They were Jewish before anything else.

The beauty of our Catholic faith is no different.  Everybody should know the two great Commandments:  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Great sound bites, especially in our day and age where people are asking for quick answers for everything; but like most sound bites, this is not enough.  These two commandments presuppose that you already know and are already morally living all the other details of the faith.  Do you know all the reasons for our Catholic morals?  Why do we have moral problems with abortion and using artificial birth control?  Why do we believe that there should be preferential option for the poor and immigration reform, why are we against the death penalty?  What does “health care reform“ really entail?  You can give the short answer: because we follow these two commandments.  And that answer would be correct, but I believe also incomplete – almost to some like a “because I said so” kind of answer.  “Because I said so” hardly works on kids, why should it work on you or your peers?

I challenge those who don’t know why abortion or using artificial birth control is wrong or any other controversial moral issues to start reading the Catechism, to read our Church documents and teachings on why we believe such things.  Chances are, your non-Catholic friend, coworker, or family member, do not have the expertise and the thorough research that the Church has gone through to reach a complete answer to a particular moral issue.  They would not be good sources to start with:  would you ask a Muslim to try and understand the Jewish faith?  Of course not!  Ignorance about our Catholic faith abounds, and this includes Catholics too!  If you can sum up the rationality for why something is wrong in the Catholic Church in a single sound bite, an Internet meme, a pithy or snarky little quote, or arguments summed up nicely on a single sheet of paper – you can be certain that the issue has not been well thought through or that the answer is incomplete.  When you do your homework - the answer may surprise you: it’s not a bunch of old fogies in Rome pontificating and trying to demean women or any other demographic!!  What you will find is the fundamentals of those two great commandments elucidated or expressed in its fullest sense.  What you will find is something beautiful and fitting; and will resonate in your soul and help you to live the fullest expression of your humanity.  You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free.  

Election Day is right around the corner, and I know that many of you will be casting your vote.  And if you are like me, I am really tired of the media and the political games; and just want this to be over with.  I know that it has certainly led to some heated discussion among friends and family.  But it is your civic duty to vote, just like it is your civic duty to go on jury duty (no matter how much you dislike it).  As American citizens you can vote and should vote – there is nothing stopping you.  As Americans, when you make your decision to cast your vote, I would like you to consider this:  There is a citizenship that holds greater precedence than your American one or any other nationality for that matter.  That citizenship is, of course, the citizenship in the Kingdom of God.  You are a son or daughter of God before you are a citizen of the United States.

First and most fundamentally, being a citizen in God’s Kingdom means knowing, being well informed, and practicing the Catholic faith before, or as, one engages the world around them.  It means to have that intimate relationship with our Lord.  The Jewish people knew this.  They knew that they had to keep their faith close to their person, living it out daily or else the tides of the pagan world would wash them away.  They knew that the faith and being God’s people was what sustained them as a nation.  We come here today with our different cultures and backgrounds, legal or illegal, white, black, yellow, brown, and everything in between.  What we share first and foremost is our humanity and our common Sonship in God – we are Children of God before all else.  If our nation: our government, our leaders, or the society in general is indeed leading people down a path of destruction and moral relativism, it will be – if not already – a dark time for us as Christians.  As civil and religious liberties, human dignity, and natural law are all on the line this election year, we must vote based upon the issues most dear to us as Catholic Christians before our own personal agendas and biases.  Those issues should be informed and connected to the beliefs of our Catholic Christian Faith and go beyond the boundaries of ideologies of political parties.  And as much as we love our country and fulfill all our civic duties, we will continue to pray for our country and the world no matter the outcome; as that is what our faith calls us to do.  We also take solace and comfort that our ultimate home is with God and that we ultimately belong to His Kingdom.

Today we hear the two great commandments:  Loving the Lord our God and loving our neighbor as ourselves; two bite size commandments with a lot of substance.  These two great commandments are the summation of the 10 Commandments and from these come the particular moral teachings that we practice today and will provide the template for morals in the future as advancements are made in technology.  Moral teachings are related and never formulated in a vacuum; and as citizens, sons and daughters of God, desiring to follow Him, we must seek to discover answers to those questions that the world proposes.  The Scriptures proclaim “Hear O Israel” to us – that we, as Sons and Daughters of God, are the new Israel and we are to hear God’s Word resonate in our hearts – that we are His people, His citizens in living out these two great commandments.  When our faith becomes integrated into our life, when our faith is not something we do on Sunday but something that is lived and breathed, when our faith inspires and guides our actions we will know truly in our hearts what Jesus declared to the scribe: “You are not far from the kingdom of God”.

Solemnity of All Saints

Rev 7:2-4, 9-14
Ps 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6
1 Jn 3:1-3
Mt 5:1-12a

I don’t think I can say this enough: I love our Catholic Faith.  There’s a “full-ness” to our Faith.  We have many feast days for the many saints in our calendar and that’s wonderful.  Everyone has their favorite saint that they like to imitate, read, or ask for intercession.  Smart saints, simple saints, fun saints, humorous saints, martyr saints, and pure saints; there are saints for pretty much every occasion and part of our life.  The famous and popular ones get on the liturgical calendar, but we must never forget the countless multitudes of saints that are not on our calendar: thousands, millions, billions of saints.

This is the fullness of our faith: that when we worship and celebrate Mass, on this day which we commemorate ALL the saints in heaven, we realize that we are worshipping as ONE BODY in Christ.  Every time we celebrate Mass, all the saints and angels have come down from heaven to this sanctuary to worship with us.  This is all the more true as we enter into the final weeks of the liturgical year.  In a few weeks we will celebrate Christ the King, reigning in heaven in glory in the company of all the saints.  And in November we remember especially the faithful departed, souls of our loved ones, and those deserving of the heavenly reward.  The liturgical year then is a microcosm, as it were, of all of time and these are the “end times” of the Second Coming.  What we read in the First Reading is being realized – this is not make believe, but rather actually happening.

I am really excited with this new translation of the Mass that we have because it is just so rich.  Look at the opening prayer, or properly called COLLECT.  It prays this: Almighty and ever-living God, by whose gift we venerate in one celebration the merits of all the Saints.  God gives us the gift of celebrating the merits of all the Saints in ONE celebration so that through their intercession we may be reconciled and earnestly long for God!!  How great is that?  And the prayer over the offerings?  May these offerings we bring …be pleasing to you, O Lord, and grant that, just as we believe the Saints to be already assured of immortality, so we may experience their concern for our salvation.   If you take this in slowly you will just see how rich this is.  Our faith professes that the Saints are assured of immortality.  And we pray that as far as we believe this; that the Saints too are praying for us and our salvation.  Wow…  This tells me two things: 1.) Our faith and dependence on their intercession is proportional to our salvation.  2.) We are not alone in this world by any stretch of the imagination.  Just because the saints are in heaven does not mean they forget us, rather they desire all the more for us to experience the joy they experience too.  This is a family reunion on a scale that is almost in comprehendible.  And finally, the closing prayer after Communion: … we implore your grace, so that, coming to perfect holiness in the fullness of your love, we may pass from this pilgrim table to the banquet of our heavenly homeland.  The altar here is a pilgrim table – as good as it is, we are not meant to be here forever – we should be longing for the banquet in heaven with all the saints.  May all the saints intercede for us without ceasing until we are reunited with Our Lord in glory.