05/30/2026
WE HAVE TO LEARN FROM THE SAINTS, NOT JUST PRAISE THEM
Homily for All Saints (First Sunday after Pentecost)
By Fr James Graham
Hebrews 11:33-12:2 / Matthew 10:32-38, 19:27-30
Today the Church celebrates the Sunday of All Saints. Every year, on the Sunday after Pentecost, we remember and honor all the faithful and strong Christians who followed our Lord Jesus Christ as the Apostles did, witnessing and preaching and teaching and baptizing all the people of the world.
Pretty clearly, the earliest tradition of our Church mostly regarded as saints only the martyrs—those who died for the faith. The troparion of All Saints refers to the Church “clothed in the blood of your martyrs.” The word “martyr,” we recall, comes from a Greek word meaning “witness.” The martyrs gave witness of their faith to the world by suffering death rather than abandoning or renouncing Jesus Christ.
But, over time, as Christianity became established in the Roman Empire, fewer persecutions and fewer martyrdoms took place. (Of course, when the armies of Islam over-ran the Christian empire, and later, when the Western Church sent the Crusades, and still later, under the Ottomans and the Turks and then under the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, many more Christians died for their beliefs.)
Still, the people of God began to realize that great holiness in this life, even without death for being a Christian, can make a person recognizable as a saint. In the Divine Liturgy, in the commemoration immediately following the sanctification of the Holy Gifts of bread and wine, and just before the Hirmos, the priest proclaims, “Again we offer You this spiritual worship for those resting in the faith, the ancestors, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, ascetics, and for every holy soul who has run the course in faith.”
This list comprises just about every category of saint—the ancestors and patriarchs and prophets who came before Jesus, such as Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Miriam, Elias, Anna and Joachim, and John the Baptizer; the holy Apostles and those called “Equal to the Apostles,” such as Mary Magdalene, Helena, and Cyril and Methodios; the preachers and evangelists who took the Gospel to all nations and explained it; the martyrs who died for the faith, such as Ignatios of Antioch, Barbara, Catherine, and Paraskeve; the confessors, who were persecuted and tortured without being killed, such as Maximos, whose thumbs were chopped off to prevent him from writing about Jesus; and the ascetics, who lived lives of rigorous prayer and fasting, such as Anthony, Sabbas, Simeon the Stylite, and Mary of Egypt.
They were like the saints described in today’s reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, suffering almost unimaginable horrors for their faith. They were like those whom Jesus commands, in St Matthew’s Gospel, to leave their houses and fields, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, and to take up their crosses and follow Him so that they will inherit eternal life. They became a “great cloud of witnesses” to inspire us to lay aside our heavy burden of sin and look to Jesus, who leads us to faith and makes our faith perfect. Jesus endured the Cross and disregarded its shame to give us the great gift of salvation—of eternal life in God’s boundless love.
Today we especially remember and praise the saints. But that’s not enough. We have to learn from them to be strong and fearless in our faith. We have to learn from them to live in a way that reflects our belief.
Everyone is called to be a saint, one of God’s holy ones, a “holy soul who runs the course in faith.” We have to do it in our own lives, in our own ways, not for the glory of sainthood, but for the glory of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and to ages of ages. Amen.
