Here's Your Hat

   Solemnity of All Saints    

Readings

Notes from a rather visual homily with the kids from Holy Family School...

Simply putting on a crown doesn’t make you a king; generally, you have to be born into it.

Donning a chef’s hat doesn’t make you a good cook; even if you have natural talents, it’s still pretty much something you must learn.

And even if you put one on your head, it’s simply impossible for you to become a flamingo.

But a halo?  What does it take to become a saint?

Unlike becoming king, it’s not something you can inherit.

Unlike becoming a chef, it’s not a skill in which you’re trained.

And unlike the flamingo, it’s something that actually quite possible.

Yet how—how to become holy?

First, like the multitude John saw in his heavenly vision, we must wash our robes white in the Blood of the Lamb: we must repent; we must seek forgiveness for our sins; we must let God wipe the slate clean.

And then we allow God to paint his image anew in us.  As we read in the First Letter of John, “We are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him…”

To be a saint mean to be like God, and only God can make us like himself.

It’s one thing to model a hat.  It’s quite another thing to model holiness.  We praise God for the models we have in the saints, who show us that holiness is possible—possible because it is God who accomplishes his wondrous work in us.