News
All Saints: Not A Movie For Entertainment
Dr. Jarlath Uche Opara Jarlathuche@gmail.com
Happy solemnity of all Saints and happy new month, bringing us closer to the end of the year. From today, the weather will change, the blare of Christmas songs would begin and the palpable palpitations for Christmas purchases would increase.
Today is all Saints according to Catholics teachings.
These are people, in human flesh, tempted and challenged by the basic craves of human desires, pummeled by the desire for sin, yet the stood against the flesh and professed Christ all through instead.
They were ordinary people with an extraordinary zeal for holiness, counting nothing more important than the desire to behold the bliss of heaven. They weren’t super-beings from the next planet with an unusual immunity to sin and flesh desires. They had the opportunity to choose sin over morals, they faced temptation, too strong to buffet them into waywardness. Rather than yield to them, they struggled against yielding and stood instead triumphantly for God. These are those who we celebrate today.
Their lives played and showed. It wasn’t only an audio it was a video too. Their words and actions weren’t in disjointed communion. Their life played so well, as one listens, the video shows equally. No discrepancies, no deception, no hide and seek, no behind closed door lifestyles. Their life played and it showed clearly too.
The celebration of these mighty men and women of valour isn’t for formalities. It isn’t for the show and fun of it. It is rather a commomeration that should fire in one the undying desire to reinvent such godly lifestyle in ones life.
All Saints day isn’t noollywood movies for entertainment and passing of time with no intention to imbibe values, morals and holiness. It isn’t a moment for liturgical jamboree, automated to play only on the 1st of November for the sake of it. It is much more, a moment for one to sit and reflect on the life of those Saints and see how such lifestyles can be reinvented and make them ours.
It is a time in the Church’s liturgical year for us to realize how important it is to emulate daily the lifestyle of these Saints, who though human were able to overcome the challenges and temptation of human weakness.
All Saints day would be a futile event if all one does is to have a fleeting remembrance of them, without a deliberate effort to replicate such life in ones daily living. If only we would try to emulate 5o% of the lifestyle of these Saints we celebrate today, our Church’s environment would be less toxic and infested with hypocritical tendencies and our society more of a safe haven than what it is currently, a den of malicious intents and purposes.
Let each Christain from today going forward make conscious effort to behave like the Saints they bear their names. Imagine if all Anthony behave like Saint Anthony of Paduo, all Aloysius behave like Saint Aloysius of Gonzaga, all Ignatius behave like Saint Ignatius of Loyola, all Paul behave like Saint Paul, all Mary, Rita, John, Jude etc behave like the Saints they bear their names. This is for me the expected gains and transformation from the commomeration of all Saints. May God help us , for the journey to Sainthood not by canonization but rather by lifestyle isn’t a walk in the park.
Happy all Saints to you all. We are Saints in proximate potency. living out our lives in ways and manner that would glorify God alone make us that Saint whose lives edify rather than vilify. That Saint that bears proudly the mark of Christ crucified.
Beyond the Saints officially recognised by the church, are Saints among some of our deceased relations gone to be with the Lord.