Last year, I stood before the great doors of Notre-Dame in Paris with my camera raised. Above me, carved in stone, stood rows of saints, prophets, kings, and angels, looking down with the patience of centuries. I took picture after picture, my heart filled with prayerful gratitude for their witness. Yet I knew no frame could hold it all.
On the Solemnity of All Saints, the Church hands me a wider lens in the Book of Revelations. Saint John looked into heaven and saw “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue” (Revelation 7:9). No camera could capture that crowd, so let me attempt to paint a few of its faces in words.
Across Races
Look first at their colors and their tongues. Here is Josephine Bakhita, kidnapped as a child in Sudan and sold again and again, who discovered that a Master greater than all her owners had loved her from the beginning. Beside her stand Charles Lwanga and the young martyrs of Uganda, who sang as they walked to the fire at Namugongo. Here is Kateri Tekakwitha of the Mohawk people, her face scarred by smallpox and radiant with prayer. Also seen are Andrew Kim Taegon of Korea and Paul Miki of Japan. Here is Martin de Porres of Lima, mocked for his mixed blood and loved by the poor for his broom and his healing hands.
Look next at their ages. Agnes of Rome was barely twelve when she chose Christ over a suitor and a sword. Carlo Acutis, the teenager in jeans and sneakers, built websites about Eucharistic miracles and was canonized only last year. At the other end of life stands Anna the prophetess, who waited in the Temple for decades until she beheld the Promise, and Pope John XXIII, who opened a Council at eighty.
Across Professions
Look at their work. Joseph planed wood, and Isidore plowed the fields outside Madrid. Zita scrubbed floors as a housemaid in Lucca. Giuseppe Moscati treated the poor of Naples without charge. Thomas More was a lawyer and statesman who kept his conscience when he lost his head. Gianna Beretta Molla was a pediatrician and a mother. Louis and Zélie Martin, a watchmaker and a lacemaker, were raised to the altar together as husband and wife. Francis de Sales, a bishop who slipped pamphlets under doors, became the patron of journalists and writers.
Different Personalities and Temperaments
Look, finally, at their temperaments, for this is where I find the most hope. Peter was impulsive, and Jerome was sharp-tongued. Augustine was restless until he rested in God. Philip Neri clowned to make people laugh at him, and Teresa of Ávila was so headstrong that at seven she ran away from home to seek martyrdom among the Moors. Thérèse of Lisieux wept easily as a child, and Moses the Black was a robber before he became a monk in the Egyptian desert. None of them was cut from the same cloth, and none was a finished, saint-ready when God called.
Different People, One Family
What makes this crowd one family? Saint John answers in the same vision: “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14). Their holiness was a gift before it was an achievement.
The second reading says it again: “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God” (1 John 3:1). The saints are children who let the Father’s love finish its work in them. In the Gospel, Jesus sketches the features shared by every portrait, namely, the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the clean of heart, the peacemakers (Matthew 5:1-12). The colors differ, but the face is the same, and the invitation to holiness applied to all.
So I look at that great gallery and ask where my own frame hangs. Or should I saw, where might my portraiture belong when the Lord calls me home? The Psalmist gives the answer we sing today: “Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.”
If longing is the first brushstroke, the portrait has already begun. My soul thirsts. Am assured that there is room in that multitude for the sensitive and the stubborn, the young and the old, the farmer and the professor, the one who scrubs floors and the one who writes code. There is room for you and for me.
Lord, paint your face in mine, and do not put down the brush until the work is done. Amen.
[Readings: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12a]
Related Articles
