1 November, 2025: Solemnity of All Saints: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12a
I’ve heard some Christians claim that the number one hundred and forty-four thousand of every tribe of Israel are the total of those who “will be saved.” That is not what the text says: rather, a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people and tongue describes the countless throng of the blessed.
Why do we human beings reduce salvation to such a competition of winners and losers? Why do we delight in vindictiveness and the punishment of others, especially those we don’t like?
The Beatitudes describe some very challenging conditions: poverty, mourning, meekness, hunger, persecution. Or some difficult responses: mercy, single-mindedness, peacemaking. If I’m stuck in the paradigm of winners and losers, what a sad lot of losers these powerless “Blessed” are!
Or have I reduced “power” to mean coercion, manipulation, retribution, having my own way, insulating my insecurities? Do these people Jesus calls “blessed” exhibit another valence of power—as in the sense of “energy”? In the sense of the strength and courage to bear suffering head on? In the ability to change and grow and mature? In the happy incapacity to be coerced or manipulated, to be defeated? Or the power of empathy, compassion, justice? To support and care for each other? To be reborn? To be raised from the dead?
The Book of Revelation is very clear that it is not the “winners” and tyrants of this world, but the Lamb who was slain who is victorious.
From the perspective of God, couldn’t our struggles to become the blessed, be our way to [survive] the great distress?