We just celebrated All Saints.  It is a profound solemnity of the Church.  Each year our first Vespers opens the solemnity of All Saints with this amazing text from St. Symeon the New Theologian: “The saints in each generation, joined together to those who have gone before and filled them with light, become a golden chain, in which each saint is a separate link, united to the next by faith and works and love. 

“The eyes of the saint make all beauty holy and the hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory of God, and the saint is never offended by anything and judges no one’s sin” (New Seeds of Contemplation, p.24). These words of Thomas Merton are packed with meaning. First he says the ‘eyes of a saint make all beauty holy’….This vision or seeing is possible for everyone…the eyes that behold beauty connect the beauty with holiness…what is seen is beautiful and it is holy, imbued with Divine life….Then the ‘hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch,’ treating everyone and everything as holy, as gift of God

“O God, keep us faithful to the gift which they received with such joy and handed on at such cost.” This is an excerpt from a prayer for the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude.  The gift they received was their ‘mission’, their mission of proclaiming the gospel, and this they handed on with the cost of their lives.  For the solemnity of ‘All Saints’ why am I beginning with these very moving words?  When I heard this prayer, I thought immediately that it expresses what saints do. They receive their call from God with joy, and they live it to the end, until the day when they hand it on to others, and with such cost.  

Today on this Solemnity of All Saints we have many things to be grateful for and to ponder.  We celebrate the anniversary of the foundation of this monastery and honor our two sisters, Godelieve and Veronique, who were part of the beginning of this monastery and continue to be faithful witnesses through their monastic calling, an inspiration for all of us.  And today also is an important moment for Redwoods as you Sr. Gertrude begin your probationary period….not a small step but one clearly of faith an