Some years ago, I was asked to spend a couple of weeks serving as a chaplain for FOCUS – the Fellowship of Catholic University Students – during their summer missionary training. It was held at the Newman Center at the University of Illinois, in Champaign. At that point, I had only been here at Montclair for a few years, so absolutely nothing prepared me for what I was about to see. Their Newman Center was enormous. They had this magnificent chapel that seated about 500 people, complete with marble and stained glass windows — honestly, putting some parish churches to shame.

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But that wasn’t all.

They had their own private residence hall, where about 600 students lived throughout the academic year. Their own cafeteria. Meeting rooms. Offices. Everything you could possibly imagine. Their chaplain and director at the time, Msgr. Greg Ketcham, explained just how extraordinary this was. Think about it: A university of about 40,000 students, and 600 of them choosing to live at the Catholic Center. Imagine the possibilities. Daily Mass, confession, Bible studies, retreats, evangelization. You don’t have to figure out how to get students to come to the Newman Center. They’re already living there!

To put it mildly, I was impressed. Actually, that’s an understatement. I came home dreaming BIG.

With the blessing of Archbishop Myers, who was our Archbishop at the time, I started exploring whether we could do something similar here at Montclair. Before long, we had developers, investors, architects, and planners looking at the property. My father, who was an architect, even got involved. He came up with this incredible sketch that included a tower from the street and rising all the way to campus level. For those familiar with our Newman Center, that would have eliminated the 35 steps to the front door and the 100+ steps behind us.

That alone would have been miraculous.  But he included plans for a parking garage built into the mountainside, virtually invisible from the street.  I remember being so excited as my father walked me through the drawings, pointing out all these incredible features.

Finally, I asked him, “So… how much would something like this cost?” Without missing a beat, he said, “Oh, you’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars.” I looked at him and said, “Did we win the Powerball and you forgot to tell me?  Why would you get me this pumped up?”

Needless to say, we scaled things back considerably. Eventually, we settled on a far more modest proposal. And after almost two years of feasibility studies, surveys, planning meetings, and countless conversations, that proposal was essentially shot down at our very first preliminary meeting with the City of Clifton. One of the most anticlimactic experiences I can remember.  Two years of work. Gone in an afternoon.

I remember coming home incredibly discouraged. But looking back, I recognize something else was going on inside me. I had started out admiring what Msgr. Ketcham and his community had accomplished. I was inspired by it. But somewhere along the line, admiration had turned into jealousy. And after that meeting, jealousy had turned into something even uglier.

Envy.

Why do THEY get to have something like that, and WE don’t?

And that’s when something good — the desire to build something that would help people encounter Jesus Christ — had become tangled up with something that wasn’t good at all.

 

I was measuring what God was doing here against what He was doing somewhere else. And because the two didn’t look alike, I was starting to think ours somehow came up short.

What does any of that have to do with All Saints Day? Actually, quite a bit. Because I think we can fall into a similar trap when it comes to holiness.

When we think about saints, our minds naturally go to the famous ones. Saint Francis of Assisi. Saint Thomas Aquinas. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Saint Joan of Arc. These extraordinary men and women whose lives changed the Church, whose writings and sacrifices continue to inspire us centuries later.

And rightly so. We celebrate their feast days throughout the year.

But today, All Saints Day, the Church invites us to look beyond the saints we know by name.

Today we’re celebrating the saints nobody wrote books about. Who never founded religious orders, performed miracles that attracted attention, or had statues erected in their honor. The countless men and women who struggled, prayed, loved, forgave, suffered, remained faithful — and whose names have largely been forgotten by history.

Somewhere in that great multitude Saint John describes in our first reading are people whose lives probably looked completely unremarkable. A parent who spent a lifetime sacrificing for their family. Someone who faithfully cared for a sick relative for years. Or picture something even simpler. A college student comes back to their dorm after a long day. They’re exhausted, have a ton of work to do, and just want to be left alone. But their roommate is sitting on the edge of the bed, clearly upset about something.  So instead of putting on their headphones or scrolling through their phone, they sit down and listen. Maybe for an hour. Maybe longer. No one’s recording it. Nobody’s posting about it. It’s not going to win them any recognition. But in that moment, they’re choosing to love someone the way Jesus loves.

And God sees that.

That’s what makes this feast so beautiful — and so challenging. Because it’s easy to admire famous saints and conclude, “Well, I could never be like them.” But these countless others? People who experienced disappointments, made mistakes, wrestled with doubts, and had to get up every morning and try again? Suddenly, sainthood doesn’t seem so far removed from our own lives.

God isn’t asking you to become the next St. Augustine or St Mother Teresa. He’s calling you to become the saint that only you can become. And what does that look like?

God only knows.

But that’s the point. He knows. He calls.

As Saint John tells us in our second reading, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are.”  Not someday, if we’re good enough. Not after we’ve accomplished something extraordinary. We’re God’s children NOW. But then John adds, “What we shall be has not yet been revealed.”

Which means we have no idea what God might accomplish in us if we truly surrender ourselves to Him.

And that’s where today’s Gospel – the Beatitudes – becomes so incredibly important.

For the longest time, I have to admit, I didn’t fully appreciate what Jesus was saying here.  We hear this familiar list: Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the merciful. And it can almost sound like Jesus is moving through different groups of unfortunate people, offering some reassurance.  You’re grieving? Blessed are you. You’re struggling? Blessed are you. People are treating you badly? Blessed are you. Almost like He’s saying, “There, there. I know life is hard. Hang in there.”

But Jesus is doing something far more profound. The Beatitudes are first and foremost a portrait of Jesus Himself – His humility, His mercy, His purity of heart, His willingness to suffer for love. But they’re also an invitation to become like Him.

And one beautiful way to understand these eight Beatitudes is to see them as a journey — each one building on each other; revealing another dimension of how God transforms our hearts.

Consider how it begins. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  Holiness begins when I recognize that I come before God with empty hands. Everything I have, everything I am, is ultimately His gift. Which frees me from constantly trying to prove myself –  or competing with what He’s doing in somebody else’s life. I simply recognize how much I need Him.

“Blessed are those who mourn.”  Jesus knows the pain we carry. The loss of someone we love. The suffering of the sick. The loneliness, heartbreaks, and disappointments of living in a broken world. He isn’t telling us that suffering is good. He’s promising that our grief doesn’t have the final word. God sees our tears and offers His consolation.

But as we draw closer to God, we also begin to mourn the brokenness within ourselves – our sins, our selfishness, the ways we’ve hurt others. And that sorrow, rather than trapping us in guilt, opens us to His forgiveness.

“Blessed are the meek.”  Meekness isn’t weakness. It’s the humility that comes from recognizing who God is and who I am. I don’t have to win every argument or constantly prove myself. Because despite my imperfections and failures, God loves me. And when that finally sinks in, it changes what I want out of life.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” We begin longing for something more than success, popularity, or getting everything we’ve planned for. We start longing for holiness. Prayer becomes more than an obligation. Confession becomes an encounter with mercy. The Eucharist becomes the source of the life we’re searching for. And drawing closer to God begins changing how we see others.

“Blessed are the merciful.” When I recognize how much mercy God has shown me, how can I refuse mercy to somebody else? Instead of seeing people as competitors, threats, or disappointments, I begin recognizing them as brothers and sisters – struggling and searching, just like me. And here’s something worth asking ourselves:  What would actually change in our relationships if we stopped keeping score — stopped measuring who had hurt us, disappointed us, gotten ahead of us — and started asking where God might be calling us to show mercy? Because that kind of mercy changes not only our relationships, but our hearts.

“Blessed are the clean of heart.” The more we love God, the more we recognize what’s getting in the way.  The jealousy. The resentment. The unhealthy attachments. The constant need for approval. And we ask Him to purify our hearts — not simply to make us look like better Catholics, but to make us genuinely more like Jesus.

“Blessed are the peacemakers.”  Having experienced God’s peace, we want others to experience it too. So we become less interested in the arguments, divisions, and resentments that consume so much of our world. Not because we avoid difficult conversations, but because we’re learning to speak the truth with love, to forgive, to reconcile.

And finally: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.” Jesus never promised that following Him would make us popular.  Sometimes doing the right thing costs us something. A friendship changes. An opportunity is lost. People misunderstand our choices. Not every disagreement is persecution, of course. But genuinely following Christ will sometimes require sacrifice. And Jesus tells us, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.”

Do you see what’s happening? These aren’t eight random descriptions of people Jesus feels sorry for.  They’re revealing how a human heart is transformed – from recognizing our need for God to discovering a love worth sacrificing for. That’s the journey toward sainthood. Not eight boxes to check off. Not spiritual perfection achieved through our own efforts. But allowing Jesus Christ to transform us, little by little, into His image.

And that’s what makes today’s first reading from Revelation so beautiful. Saint John sees “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue.” They’re standing before God’s throne, clothed in white robes, washed clean in the blood of the Lamb. They’re not there because they lived flawless lives. They’re there because they’ve been redeemed by Jesus Christ. Their holiness wasn’t something they manufactured on their own. It was His grace working in their lives.

Most of their names we’ve never heard. Most of their stories we’ll never know. But God saw every sacrifice, every hidden act of love, every moment of forgiveness, every prayer whispered through tears. Nothing was wasted.

And that brings me back to those grand plans my father drew up for our Newman Center. That tower never got built. The parking garage never happened. And yes, those 35 steps out front and 100+ steps behind us are still there. But maybe what I most needed to learn from that experience was that I’d become so focused on what God was accomplishing somewhere else that I was missing what He wanted to accomplish right here. Because ultimately, the most important thing God wants to build here isn’t a magnificent chapel, a residence hall, or a hundred-million-dollar complex.

It’s saints. And that’s true of our families, our friendships, our workplaces, our lives. Maybe nobody will ever write a book about you. Maybe there won’t be a statue of you in a church or a feast day with your name on it. But none of those things makes someone a saint. What matters is allowing Jesus Christ to transform your life. And that doesn’t have to begin with some grand, dramatic gesture. In fact, here’s one thing I’d invite everyone to do this week. Think of one person you know who’s carrying something difficult – grief, loneliness, anxiety, some struggle you know about but perhaps haven’t really taken the time to acknowledge. Before next Sunday, reach out to that person. Send them a message, something as simple as, “How are you really doing? I’d love to catch up.”

And then make time to listen. That’s it. No audience. No recognition. No need to tell anyone else about it. Just one small act of love that might mean more to that person than you’ll ever realize. Because that’s how holiness grows. And it’s how so many of those unknown saints lived their lives. Saint John reminded us: “What we shall be has not yet been revealed.”  You may not know what holiness will look like in your life. Why some doors have closed, why things haven’t worked out the way you planned, why your path looks so different from somebody else’s.

But God knows who He’s calling you to become — even when you can’t yet see it. Not somebody else’s life. Not somebody else’s accomplishments. Not somebody else’s holiness.

Yours.

And maybe that’s the most remarkable thing about All Saints Day: We’re celebrating the saints whose names we don’t know. And being reminded that God is calling us to be among them.