Homily for the Feast of All Saints: “Tell me, Lord, how did you know that there was a saint in this sinner?”

Saturday, November 1, 2025
All Saints' Day – Year C

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1^st reading: Revelation 7,2-4.9-14
Psaume : 23 (24),1-2, 3-4ab,5-6
2^rd reading: 1 John 3,1-3
Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12a

This is the story of a little boy who goes to school every day, and on his way there he passes a sculptor's workshop. The workshop opens onto the street, and every day on his way to and from school, the little boy stops and watches the sculptor working: the sculptor is in front of a very large block of stone. And every day, the little boy watches, becoming more and more intrigued. Deep down, he longs to ask the sculptor a question, but he doesn't dare… And then one day, he makes up his mind: 

— Can I ask you a question? — Yes, said the sculptor… — How did you know there was a horse in the stone…?

When I first heard this story a long time ago, I immediately thought of another question: Lord, how did you know there was a saint in this sinner? And for a long time, this little story has made me reflect on holiness.

A few years ago, Padre Pio was canonized; he entered the General Calendar of the Church, and on September 23rd, we celebrate the memorial of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina. During the Office of Readings, an excerpt from a letter of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina to a nun is read, in which he writes:

It is through the repeated blows of a healing chisel and careful cleaning that the divine Artist wishes to prepare the stones with which the eternal edifice is built. […]

A mason who wants to build a house must, first and foremost, thoroughly clean the stones he intends to use for construction. This he achieves with hammer and chisel. The Heavenly Father behaves in the same way with chosen souls […].

The soul destined to reign with Jesus Christ in eternal glory must therefore be cleansed with the hammer and chisel, which the Divine Artist uses to prepare the stones, that is, the chosen souls. But what are these hammer and chisel blows? My sister, they are shadows, fears, temptations, afflictions of the mind and spiritual turmoil, with a scent of desolation, and also physical discomfort.

Therefore, thank the infinite goodness of the eternal Father who treats your soul in this way, because it is destined for salvation.

Just as the sculptor makes the horse appear in the stone by stripping the stone of what is unnecessary, so too, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus will grow through stripping away: 

Deprived of her mother when she was four and a half years old with the death of Zélie; 

stripping away her second mother Pauline who returns to the Carmel unexpectedly, regarding the date, for Thérèse;

stripped of her health with this strange disease which they feared would kill her at the age of ten and from which she would be miraculously cured by the Virgin Mary; 

stripping away of his way of living childhood and stripping away of his refuge in tears to the complete conversion of Christmas 86, in the staircase of Buissonnets; 

shedding her stubbornness in wanting to enter the Carmel for Christmas 87. She will only enter in April 88; 

progressive stripping away of his understanding of holiness by sheer willpower in order to welcome a grace to be lived; 

his health deteriorated more definitively with the first hemoptysis, on the night of Holy Thursday to Good Friday in the year 1896;

stripped a few days later of her joy at contemplating the beautiful sky of our homeland towards which she walks, as she enters the thickest darkness…

But I could also have spoken of the stripping away of the tranquil bourgeois life lived at Les Buissonnets when she entered the austerities of the Carmel, the stripping away of her freedom of action by entering into religious obedience…

It is through a process of stripping away that God leads Thérèse. And it is not a far-fetched idea to observe this, because Thérèse herself says so. In a letter of August 13, 1893, to her sister Céline, her closest confidante, Thérèse begins with an example. She focuses on a fruit, the peach, and says to Céline: “Here is a beautiful peach, rosy and so sweet that all the confectioners could not imagine such a delicate flavor. Tell me, my Céline, is it for the peach that the good Lord created this lovely pink color, so velvety and so pleasant to see and touch? Is it for it that He used so much sugar?... but no, it is for us and not for it. What belongs to it, what constitutes the essence of its life, is its pit; we can take away all its beauty without taking away its being.” — Meditate on this well next summer when you eat a peach: what she says there is absolutely remarkable — Thus Jesus delights in bestowing his gifts on some of his creatures, but often it is to win over other hearts, and then when his goal is achieved, he makes these outward gifts disappear, He completely strips bare the souls that are dearest to Him. Seeing themselves in such abject poverty, these poor little souls are afraid; it seems to them that they are good for nothing since they receive everything from others and can give nothing. This is not so; the essence of their being is at work in secret. Jesus is forming within them the seed that must grow up in the celestial gardens of Heaven. He delights in showing them their nothingness and His power. He uses the most humble instruments to reach them in order to show them that it is indeed He alone who works. He hastens to perfect His work for the day when, the shadows having vanished, He will no longer use intermediaries, but an eternal Face-to-Face encounter!… (LT 147 of August 13, 1893, to Céline)

We can therefore understand how Thérèse will be able to write to Léonie four years later:

The only happiness on earth is to strive to always find delightful the portion that Jesus gives us. (LT 257 of July 17, 97, to Léonie)

Gradually allowing herself to be stripped of everything, Thérèse increasingly lets the Lord act in her life. Searching for the string "dépouille" (spoils/removals) in Thérèse's works, I found five occurrences, including the one I read to you here: "He completely strips the souls dearest to Him." But the other four occurrences refer to the "mortal remains" of Zélie or to Thérèse herself when she dies. At the end of our lives, or rather at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, we must allow ourselves to be completely stripped: we will leave our mortal remains on this earth, we will leave them to the charity of those around us so that they may lay them in the tomb as Jesus was laid in the tomb, and not burn them—for the Christian imitates the Lord even in the act of being buried, in the expectation of the resurrection… We must allow ourselves to be stripped of everything. The Lord speaks of Himself as a thief in several parables: the thief who comes at night. And in the last exchanges with Thérèse, when she is in the infirmary, she is asked if she is afraid of the thief, because she herself speaks of the thief and she says:

Oh no, I'm not afraid of the thief, because I love him. 

Walking toward holiness means learning gradually—I was about to say, at God's pace—to let ourselves be stripped bare in order to discover more and more what constitutes the essence of life. And the essence of life is to love God and to love our neighbor as Jesus loved us, as Jesus loves the Father. And the Holy Spirit is given to us so that we may live this love. This is what must concern us above all else; everything else comes second and takes on its meaning in relation to this love for God and this love for our brothers and sisters, which testifies to the truth of our love for God. 

That is why Thérèse will exclaim in her offering to merciful love:

I desire to fulfill your will perfectly and to attain the degree of glory that you have prepared for me in your kingdom; in short, I desire to be holy, but I feel my powerlessness and I ask you, O my God, to be my holiness yourself.

(Pri 06 – Offering to Merciful Love, June 9, 1895)

It is a path, that: a path that takes time, that takes our whole life. Towards the end of manuscript A — and she wrote this in the autumn of 1895, no doubt, when she was 23, soon to be 24 — Thérèse says: “At the beginning of my spiritual life, around the age of 13 or 14, I wondered what I would gain later, for I believed it impossible for me to better understand perfection; I quickly realized that the further one advances on this path, the further one believes oneself to be from the end, so now I resign myself to seeing myself always imperfect and I find my joy in it…” (Ms A 74r°)

Brothers and sisters, how do we live this path (and I conclude with this)? We heard it in the Book of Revelation. First, we heard in the First Letter of Saint John the reality of our being: We are children of God. But what we will be has not yet been revealed. So we don't see that we are children of God: we believe it. But just because we don't see it and we believe it doesn't mean it isn't real. And what are these children of God? Let's reread the Book of Revelation: 

Which are these people dressed in white robes that they have washed in the blood of the Lamb, except on the one hand the martyrs and on the other hand the baptized who have been plunged by baptism into the death of the Lord to already participate in his resurrection — and the baptized receives the white garment: “you have clothed yourself with Christ.” (Gal 3:27).

And what are we told about these people?They stand before the Throne and before the LambDo I stand tall in my life? Tall, because I participate in the resurrection of Christ, inwardly standing, without fear, because the Lord is my support. 

And do I stand before the Throne and before the Lamb Or do I turn my back on the Throne and the Lamb? How do I seek to live my whole day under God's benevolent gaze, under the loving gaze of Jesus? How does my life become an unceasing dialogue with the Lord Jesus? And how do I cry out with a loud voice: "Salvation belongs to our God."and not "salvation comes from my efforts"? 

That is why I ask you, O my God, to be my holiness yourself. 

This, brothers and sisters, is how to advance on this path of self-denial: it is to stand before God in the certainty that, since our baptism, the life of the Risen One dwells within us and that we must stand firm, glorifying God who is working in our lives for our salvation, often without our knowledge. That is why, with Thérèse, echoing her words, as we leave this church a little while ago, we can depart joyfully exclaiming:

“I can therefore, despite my smallness, aspire to holiness.”

Amen.