THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS
November 1
Introduction
The Saints have enjoyed tremendous popularity in the past: the churches were full of their statues, and recourse to them was perhaps more than to God. There was a saint for truck drivers, students, lost items, eye diseases, and even sore throat. They were considered a kind of intermediaries that had the function to ‘soften’ the impact of a God thought too big and too far away, a little unapproachable and somewhat foreign to our problems. Today there is a tendency to resort to the saints to ask them to present to God a fading request. We turn to the Lord more and more, directly, with the confidence of children. The saints—Mary too—are rightly regarded as sisters and brothers who, with their lives, indicate a path to follow Christ and invite us to pray all the time, along with them, to the one Father.
The word ‘saint’ indicates the presence in the persons of a divine and beneficial force that allows one to stand out, to distance oneself from what is imperfect, weak, and ephemeral. Among the people who appeared in this world, only Christ has possessed the fullness of this force of goodness, and only he can be declared saint, as we sing in the Gloria: ‘You alone are holy.’
But we, too, can rise up to him and become partakers of his holiness. He came into the world to accompany us towards the holiness of God, towards the unattainable goal that he has shown us: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father” (Mt 5:48). Various names identified his first disciples. They were called ‘Galileans,’ ‘Nazarenes,’ and in Antioch, ‘Christians.’ It was about some derogatory designations: ‘Galileans’ was synonymous with ‘insurgents,’ ‘Nazarenes’ referred to the despised village from where their Master came; ‘Christian’ means ‘anointed,’ that is, followers of a self-styled ‘Lord’s anointed who ended up on the gallows.
These were not the titles that they employed between them. They qualified themselves as ‘brothers,’ ‘believers,’ ‘the disciples of the Lord,’ ‘the perfect ones,’‘ people of the way’ and… ‘saints.’ Paul wrote his letters “to all the saints who live in the city of Philippi…” (Phil 1:1), “to the saints who are at Ephesus.…” (Eph 1:1); “to the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ who live in Colossae…” (Col 1:2); “to all the saints in the whole of Achaia” (2 Cor 1:1), “to all of God’s favorite in Rome and that you are called to be saints…” (Rom 1:7). He did not write to the saints in heaven but to real people who lived in Philippi, Ephesus, Corinth, Colossae, and Rome. They were the saints.
A saint is every disciple, whether he is already in heaven with Christ or who still lives as a pilgrim on this earth. In the Orthodox temples, the saints in heaven are painted along the walls at eye level, standing, as the resurrected ones mentioned by the seer of the Revelation (Rev 7:9). One wants to remind all participants in the celebration that the saints in heaven, although they may be contemplated only with the eyes of faith, continue to live alongside the saints of the earth. They are part of the community called to give thanks to the Lord.
“Holy is your family, O Lord, in heaven and on earth.”
First Reading: Revelation 7:2-4,9-14
How much suffering, tears, and disappointments are in the life of a person! Why so many abuses, violence, and injustice in the world? Four chapters of the Revelation are dedicated to this distressing problem (Rev 5-8). It is the section of the seven seals. In the hands of the Lord seated on a throne—said the seer—is the book in which the history of humankind is registered, with all the dramas that always afflict. It also contains the answer to the disturbing riddles of evil and pain: but unfortunately, the book is ‘sealed with seven seals’ that no one can break.
Therefore, the mysterious designs of God will always remain veiled. To the seer of the Apocalypse who inconsolably cries, an old man comes up and says, “Stop crying, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David has won. He will open the scroll and its seven seals” (Rev 5:5).
Behold, the slain Lamb breaks, one by one, the seals and unravels the puzzles. Our passage tells what happens after the breaking of the sixth seal. Four heavenly spirits, placed at the four corners of the world, are to release the winds that devastate the land and the sea, then an angel, holding the seal of the living God, ascends from the Orient and orders to stop. Not everyone has to perish. Those on whom he will have impressed the brand of the servants of the Lord will be saved. (Rev 7:1-4).
The elect, the saved ones are one hundred forty-four thousand. It is a symbolic number. It follows from 12 x 12 x 1000 and does not indicate—as someone mistakenly believes—the saints in heaven, but all the people of God living on this earth, Christians who, for the seal of baptism, are counted in the ranks of the elect. They are not privileged; they are not those spared from the trials and tribulations that afflict other people. They are, however, exempted from the power of the abyss; they belong to the Lord and are in a new condition, that of someone who is a partaker of God’s holiness.
Having understood the designs of the Lord on the world, they contemplate from a different perspective what is happening on earth; they watch from above, from heaven, all the events and read them with the eyes of God. They are upset, yes, like everyone, by the hardships through which they must pass, but they are not disturbed. The disease, pain, and betrayals are not defeats and absurdities but moments of maturation and growth. Death is not a joke but a birth that marks the beginning of the second part of life, the best life.
The Lamb was slain who, with his life cut short by hatred, but given for love, has revealed to them that God does re-enter the most absurd events in his plan of salvation. After this first vision that presents the community of saints who, on this earth, are a sign of the heavenly city, there appeared a great multitude that no one could count, people of every race, tongue, people, and nation. They stand before the throne of the Lamb, wearing white robes and palms in their hands (v. 9).
The white dress symbolizes joy and new life that is revealed in their fullness, without any stain of sin. The palms are the sign of victory they have achieved with their fidelity to Christ. Who are they? This is the community of saints in heaven, made up of those who have completed the pilgrimage on earth and entered into the blessed condition. They have endured tribulation and persecution and, as the Lamb, gave their lives for love. People considered them defeated, but God proclaimed them winners and presented them with the palm (v. 14).
The verses that follow and are not reported in our reading describe the fate that awaits them: Never again will they suffer hunger or thirst or be burned by the sun or any scorching wind. The Lamb near the throne will be their Shepherd, and he will bring them to springs of life-giving water (vv. 16-17). Christ—the slain Lamb—will recognize them as lambs of his flock because they trusted him; they followed him in the gift of life.
This page has been written to instill courage in the Christian communities of Asia Minor. At the end of the first century, they were tempted to deny their Master because of persecution. The prospect of sharing heaven with him was to encourage them to hold fast to their faith and continue following with patience and perseverance, the slain Lamb.
Second Reading: 1 John 3:1-3
The life of God that the Christian receives in baptism is a spiritual, mysterious reality. To describe it, Jesus, talking to Nicodemus, employs a comparison. It’s like the wind—he says—it is not seen. No one knows where it comes from, nor where does it go. Yet we know it exists; it is felt; we notice the effects. The divine life in the person cannot be verified with the senses, but the signs of its presence are unmistakable. Those who have embraced it become a new person, guided by a spirit not of this world.
The passage from the letter of John begins with an exclamation of joy: See what love the Father has given us to be called children of God, and so we are! (v. 1). In the Semitic mind, the children gave continuity to the father’s biological life and made him present. For this, it was expected that the parent is recognizable in them: for the outward appearance and facial features, of course, but above all for the moral integrity, loyalty to God, and the most significant aspects of his character.
The true Christian is, in the world, the presence of the divine and, like any child, reproduces the appearance of the Father who is in heaven. The result—says John—is that those who do not know God cannot even recognize the children generated by him (v. 1). The children of God make choices in tune with the thoughts and feelings of the Father; they look alike, are different from the others, they are ‘saints.’ It is not surprising then that they are not understood by those who focus their sight only on the realities of the earth.
Paul also recalls this truth to the Christians of Corinth. The disciples of the Lord—he said—have a wisdom, a way of assessing this world that is incompatible with the criteria of the judgment of people. It is “a mysterious, divine wisdom that no ruler of this world ever knew… The natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand” (1 Cor 2:6-14).
After reminding the Christians of the dignity of their divine sonship—even now we are children of God—the letter's author invites them to contemplate the radiant destiny that awaits them: What we shall be, has not yet been revealed (v. 2.) The present condition is not final. A veil, made of our earth-bound mortal reality, prevents us from realizing what we really are. One day this veil will be removed, and then we will contemplate God as he is and understand what we already are today. In the mother’s womb, the child receives food and life from the mother, yet, although depending entirely on her, cannot see her face. Only after birth can they look and tenderly embrace the one who generated them.
In this world, a person lives the gestation period in anticipation of the moment of delivery. It is located in the bosom of God, who is father and mother. “In him, we live and move and have our being”—Paul reminds the Athenians (Acts 17:28), but we cannot see his face. Yet when he appears in glory, we know that we shall be like him, for then we shall see him as he is (v. 2).
Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12a
A human being has always cultivated a desire to meet God, question him, know his thoughts, and discover his plans. How to find him? Where can we meet him? In ancient times, it was believed that the ideal place would be on the peaks of the mountains. All nations had their sacred mountains—meeting places between heaven and earth, the abode of the gods and goal of human ascent—for the Greeks, Olympus; for the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Ararat; for the Ugarits, the Tzaphon.
Israel also shared this belief. Abraham, Moses, and Elijah had their strongest spiritual experiences on the mountains of Moria, Horeb, and Mount Carmel. Matthew places the first discourse of Jesus on the mountain. Christian devotion has identified this place as the hill overlooking Capernaum.
The nuns who guard it have turned it into an oasis of peace, meditation, and prayer. Strolling under the majestic trees, greeted by the rustle of leaves blowing in the breeze coming down from the snowy peaks of Lebanon, contemplating from above the lake that Jesus and his disciples crossed so many times, naturally prompts the eyes to lift up to the sky and think of God. No matter how impressive this experience is, the mountain referred to by Matthew should not be understood in a geographical sense but its theological significance. More than a real place, ‘the mountain’ in the Bible refers to any place or time when we dispose of ourselves to meet the Lord and to accept his word.
We can visualize the scene. Jesus detaches himself from the plain, a symbol of the society where—in the words of the Ecclesiastes—“all that is done, all that succeeds, results from rivalry with the neighbor: all is meaningless and chasing the wind” (Ecl 4:4). He climbs the mountain where the judging criteria and proposed models of life are radically different: those of God.
The value scale established on the plains is, in broad terms, as follows: first health, then family, professional success, flush bank account, and good friends. Even God and the saints—of course—are ranked, but nearer the bottom, as helpful supports of more immediate values that are really at heart.
Will the person who lives his own life according to these ideals be successful? What does God think of it? To avoid the risk of focusing on disappointing goals and wasting our existence, it is necessary to confront his judgment. Which scale of values is proposed on the mountain? Today’s liturgy invites us to reflect on the proposals of blessedness made by Jesus. They are those that the saints in heaven have put into practice and that the saints of earth, encouraged by their example, are recommended to follow.
Blessed are the poor in spirit
It is hard to say in how many ways this beatitude has been interpreted. Someone referred to the miserable, the beggars; the exploited as if they were the kind of people God is pleased with and therefore should be left in their wretched state. Indeed, it should be ensured that all become like them! This is, of course, an absurd, deviant interpretation. The humanity dreamed by God does not include his poor children, but one in which “no one is poor” (Acts 4:34).
Others believe that the ‘poor in spirit’ are those who, while maintaining the possession of their property, are detached from them and generous in bestowing offerings on the less fortunate. But alms—even recommended in some (rare) biblical texts—do not introduce into the world the ‘new justice’; they do not solve the root problem of the equitable division of assets because the concept presumes the existence of the rich and poor on earth.
The principle of ‘to each his own’ that establishes our justice seems wise and sensible. But it too stems from a false premise and is derived from the assumption that something belongs to a person, while, in fact, everything is of God: "The Lord's is the earth and its fullness, the universe and its inhabitants" (Ps 24:1). A person is only an administrator of goods, and they will be called to render an account of this administration.
The evil instincts of possessing, accumulating, and using goods only for self comefrom the misguided relationship with this world's goods. All the evil: wars, violence, disagreements, and jealousy ensue from there (1 Timothy 6:10). Therefore, the whole of creation is "groaning in pain and begs to be renewed and redeemed" (Rom 8:19-25).
All possessive adjectives that we use express an erroneous conception of reality: if all is God, it makes no sense to talk about mine or yours, or even of ours, because everything is of the creator. The biblical image of the world is that of the banquet hall where the Lord calls each of his children from the moment he calls them into life. The person is a table companion who rejoices with the brothers/sisters for the gifts that the Father freely makes available to all. Whoever manages them as their property commits theft? Life itself does not belong to the human being; it is of God and is a gift that must be offered for love.
In respect of goods, Jesus never assumed the attitude of contempt that characterized the cynical philosophers. For them, ‘dishonest wealth’ also becomes good when distributed to the poor (Lk 16:19). However, although Jesus never condemned it, he regarded it as a threat, “an obstacle—insurmountable for many—to enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 19:23). The more a person is favored, the more goods they have, the more they are tempted to tie their heart to them, keep them for themselves and employ them selfishly.
From those who want to follow him—from those who want to be holy—Jesus asks for total detachment. "None of you may become my disciple if he/she doesn't give up everything he/she has" (Lk 14:33). In the context of this essential requirement to share all that is available to us from God, the beatitude should be read.
Jesus does not exalt poverty as such. By adding the ‘in spirit,’ he clarifies that not all the poor are blessed. By free choice, only those who strip themselves of all and manage their assets according to God’s plan are blessed. The poor in spirit decide not to possess anything for themselves and make available to others all that they receive. Mind you: the poor, according to the Gospel, are not those who have nothing, but those who do not keep anything for themselves.
Whoever has more is considered wealthy, but not if they become haughty, humiliate the less gifted, or use their assets to oppress others. Whoever spends themselves for others and puts themselves at the service of those who need is truly poor in spirit. Someone miserable need not be ‘poor in spirit.’ They are not if they curse themselves and others; attempt to improve their condition with violence or deceit; think only of themselves and lose interest in others or cultivate the dream of rising to the prestigious position of the rich.
Voluntary poverty is for all. The renunciation of the selfish use of all property is not optional, not a counsel reserved to some who want to be heroes or more perfect. This is what distinguishes a saint, every Christian.
The promise that accompanies the beatitude does not refer to a distant future. It does not guarantee entry into heaven after death but announces an immediate joy: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. From the moment we choose to become and remain poor, we enter the ‘kingdom of heaven’ and belong to the saints' family.
This beatitude is not a message of resignation. Still, of hope: no one will be in need when all become ‘poor in spirit,’ when they put the gifts they have received from God at the service of others, as does God, ‘the Holy One’ who, while possessing everything, is infinitely poor: he holds nothing back, gives everything, even his Son.
Blessed are those who suffer
For centuries in the Church, an asceticism that exalted pain as a means of uniting ourselves more closely to the suffering of Christ was preached. It attracted legions of saints and awakened precious spiritual energies, but it has also spread the mistaken belief that suffering is pleasing to God. It is not. Suffering dehumanizes, and the Lord cannot be pleased with an offer that disfigures the face of his children. Jesus—quoting the prophet Hosea—said that God desires love, not sacrifice (Mt 9:13).
What does he mean then when he proclaims, blessed are the ‘afflicted?’ The term he uses is well known to those familiar with the Bible. The ‘afflicted’ spoken of in the book of the prophet Isaiah are those who do not have a house to live in, no fields to cultivate because strangers have usurped the legacy of their fathers. They are those who have to put themselves at the service of unscrupulous landowners; suffer injustice, abuse of power, embezzlement and humiliation (Is 61:7).
To these brokenhearted, who sit on ashes, wearing mourning garments (Is 61:3), the prophet addresses a message of hope. God—he assures—is about to intervene, he will reverse the situation and eliminate the causes of mourning: “cheer up those who mourn in Zion, give them a garland instead of ashes, oil of gladness instead of mourning, and festal clothes instead of despair” (Is 61:3).
In the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus applied this oracle to himself. He proclaimed that he had come to fulfill this promise of God (Lk 4:21). The ‘afflicted’ that heaven regards as blessed are attentive and sensitive to the big cry of pain that rises from the world. “They weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15) but do not resign themselves in the face of evil and suffering. They expect salvation from God and his word.
They will be comforted in the Kingdom of God—of which Jesus, the Holy One, has laid the foundation and that the saints have worked together to build. There, all the situations of pain and tears will be erased.
Blessed are the meek
The adjective ‘meek’ evokes the idea of a resigned person who does not react to provocation and passively accepts injustice without complaint. Is this the person whoshuns every conflict (revealing a weak personality) who is beatified? The term ‘meek’ used by Jesus is taken from the Old Testament and, more precisely, from (Ps 37, where those deprived of their rights and liberty are called ‘the meek ones.’ They are poor because the powerful have stolen their fields, houses, and even sons and daughters. They are forced to suffer injustice without protest.
They do not give up, but they refuse to resort to violence to restore justice. They do not let themselves be guided by anger; they do not feed the resentment and the desire for revenge. They trust in God and await the coming of his Kingdom. However, theirs is not passive waiting as that of those waiting for the bus; it is active; it translates into concrete commitment.
Jesus is the model of true meekness (Mt 11:29; 21:5). He certainly was not a weak, timid, or shy person. He experienced dramatic conflict but confronted it with the characteristics of the heart that describe the ‘meek ones.’ He repudiated violence, loved those who opposed it—by being patient, tolerant, and becoming the servant of all.
Holy are those who cultivate the dreams of God on earth and, with Jesus—the Holy One—undertake to achieve them, giving evidence against those who oppose them, with the same ‘meekness’ of the Master. The Promise: they will inherit the earth. They will receive from God a new land; they will build with him a new world, genuinely human.
A dream? Yes, but God and the saints do not allow themselves to be persuaded by the evil one who tries to convince them that God's promises will never come true. They do not resign themselves to the often-bleak reality in which they are called to operate and maintain firmly that hope which Paul qualifies with the Greek term hupomoné, the characteristic of semi-precious stones that resist any pressure (1 Thessalonians 1:3).
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness
Hunger and thirst are the most basic biological needs. With the same passion—Jesus recommends—his disciples should hunger for ‘justice.’ What is justice? Human justice states that all people are treated according to what they deserve: the good people are rewarded; the guilty are punished and the innocent released. ‘Executing justice’ is synonymous with sending someone to the gallows.
Is this the justice for which we must hunger and thirst? The adjective ‘just’ can be applied to God, but with great caution, because it runs the risk of transforming the Lord into a judge and guarantor of morality with promises of reward and the threat of punishment. The Bible often speaks of God’s justice, but always and only as a synonym of kindness, never in the sense of our distributive justice. God is just, not because he compensates according to merit, but because, with his love, he makes righteous those who are evil. He is just because “he desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4).
For us, ‘justice is done’ means that the culprit is punished. For God, justice is done when he manages to make the wicked righteous or when he saves a sinner from the abyss of guilt. Nobody has longed a much for this justice to be established in the world as Jesus has. To the disciples who invited him to eat, he replied: “My food is to bring to completion the work of him who sent me” (Jn 4:34). Only the righteousness of God could satisfy his hunger. He announced the word that made people just, and there were so many people who needed to hear it that he had no time even to eat (Mk 6:31). Saints are those who share with Jesus his hunger and thirst for the salvation of his brothers and sisters.
The promise: they shall be filled. They will experience—already here on earth—the joy of God and of the angels of heaven who have more joy over one sinner that is made just over ninety-nine who do not need repentance (Lk 15:7).
Blessed are those who do works of mercy
This beatitude seems to fit within the conflict between patience and the desire to punish the culprit. It appears to be an invitation to let compassion and forgiveness prevail always. This is undoubtedly one of the aspects of ‘mercy’ and sits well with the recommendation of Jesus: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Judge not lest you be judged: condemn not, and you will not be condemned: forgive, and you shall be forgiven” (Lk 6:36-37). But this does not exhaust the richness of the biblical term.
In the Bible, ‘mercy,’ rather than a feeling of pity, is an action favoring those who need help. The clearest example is that of the Samaritan—the Greek text says—he has made mercy towards the man attacked by bandits (Lk 10:37).
The rabbis of Jesus’ time taught that God is merciful because he does works of mercy, and they specify: “God clothed the naked—when he covered Adam and Eve with leaves”; (Gen 3:21)—so you must clothe the naked. He visited the sick: In fact, he visited Abraham when he was suffering after his circumcision and visited the barren Sarah (Gen 18:1)—so you must visit the sick. He comforted those who were grieving—when he comforted Isaac after his father's death (Gen 25:11)—so you must comfort those who are suffering. He buried the dead—he was the one who buried Moses (Deut 34:6)—so you must bury the dead. Merciful are the saints who, faced with the needs of a person, feel the emotion of the heart of God and intervene, performing works of mercy, as God did.
The Promise: they will find mercy. In the new world, in the Kingdom of God, they too, when they need help, will meet brothers/sisters always willing to reach out to them, indeed, to give their lives to help them.
Blessed are the pure in heart
Purity was one of the most marked characteristics of the Jewish religion. Any contact with pagan cults, with something that might recall death and was unclean, had to be avoided. From this requirement of purity, there arose prohibitions, the detailed provisions of the rabbis obliging them to stay away from what was perceived as contrary to the holiness of God. Since transgressions were inevitable, it was necessary to obsessively resort to purification rites, ablutions, and sacrifices (Mk 7:3-4).
Jesus is not interested in these practices. He demands purity of heart. There is nothing external that makes a person unclean. Only what comes from the heart can make one unclean (Mt 15:17-20). The pure in heart are those who have an undivided heart and do not love both God and idols. A person, who serves two masters, whose conduct does not agree with the faith they profess, who loves God, but keeps resentment toward a brother or sister in their heart, who never commits a wrong action, but is adulterous in his heart, has an impure heart (Mt 5:28).
The promise: they shall see God. To them is given the blessed experience of trusting abandonment in the arms of God.
Blessed are those who are committed to peace
Among the works of mercy recommended by the rabbis of Jesus’ time, bringing peace and reconstructing harmony among persons was the most respected. Every action that aims at restoring peace—it was said—attracts the blessings of God. Blessed is undoubtedly the one who, without resorting to violence, commits all their energy to put an end to war and conflict. Blessed are those who come between the contenders and try to convince them to dialogue, find harmony and establish peace.
But in the Bible, the word ‘peace’ (shalom) is not just the absence of war. It indicates total well-being, implies harmony with God, with others and with themselves, prosperity, justice, health, and joy. ‘Peacemakers’ are all those who are committed to making this life as suitable as possible for every person.
The most beautiful of the promises are given to these saints: God considers them his children.
Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness
Some disasters strike unexpectedly: fatality, illness, or misfortune can happen to anyone. Another suffering is the result of foolish or unethical behavior, and we tend to look for these! There is a third kind of tribulation: those we do not want. Still, we must consider—because they are an inevitable price to pay—if we choose to follow Christ.
Jesus did not delude his disciples; he has not promised honor or achievement, has not assured them of people's approval and consent, and insistently and repeated that adhesion to him entails persecution: "If the head of the family has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of the family" (Mt 10:25). And again: "They will lay their hands on you and persecute you; you will be delivered to the synagogues and put in prison, and for my sake, you will be brought before kings and governors" (Lk 21:12). "When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next" (Mt 10:23). The wisdom of God says: "I will send prophets and apostles and these people will kill and persecute some of them. But the present generation will have to answer for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the foundation of the world" (Lk 11:49-50).
Persecution is the uniform that distinguishes the disciple. Paul is explicit: “All who want to serve God in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim 3:12). How come? We would expect that a Christian—a messenger of peace and hope—is to be welcomed with open arms, joy and gratitude. Instead, the proclamation of the Gospel creates conflict. The reason is that the old-world order is incompatible with the Kingdom of God and does not give up peacefully. It reacts by attacking those it wants to have disappeared.
Christ paid with his life for being loyal to his mission, and his disciples must not expect any different treatment: “A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you, too” (Jn 15:20). The persecution of the righteous is often spoken of in the Old Testament. In the psalms, the righteous ask God: "Deliver me from the grip of my persecutors" (Ps 7:2); "When will you judge my persecutors? When they persecute me, help me" (Ps 119:84,86). Jeremiah is opposed, slandered, and imprisoned in a cistern.
In the Old Testament, however, persecution is considered bad, and the person who suffers it cannot be happy until God intervenes to end it. In the New Testament, the perspective changes. He who suffers for his fidelity to the Lord is proclaimed blessed by the very fact of being persecuted.
Persecution is not a sign of failure but success. It is a cause of joy because it is the proof of pursuing the right choice, according to the ‘wisdom of God.’ Inevitably, those who propose in a society based on the principles taught ‘on the mountain’ are persecuted. They introduce into the world the antibodies of service that attack the viruses of power. They do not give a chance to these viruses, although camouflaged or hidden under religious trappings, to survive.
Whoever feels their position and prestige is threatened by the coming of the Kingdom of God reacts with violence, if necessary. The saints never had an easy life: their fate was sealed when they agreed to act as lambs.
Subjected to persecution, they have not succumbed to the temptation to behave like wolves. They have not strayed from the behavior suggested by the Master: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44) and by Paul: “Bless those who persecute you” (Rom 12:14).
