(NOTE: Reblogged from 2008 and expanded.)

November 1st is the Feast of All Saints, which serves as the Feast day for everyone in Heaven, whether officially canonized or not.

This is an important feast day as it reminds all of us of those who made it, who had run the race and fought the good fight and have arrived at their true home.

These serve as examples to us. They were like us. Suffered the same pains, experienced the same joys. The had a life, like ours, regardless of the era in which they lived. Whether they are known to us because of what they left behind, or are completely unknown and we will not meet them until we (hopefully) arrive there, if they made it, so can we.

They are important to us, these saints. As they are now in God’s domain and have lived lives of virtue and submission to God’s will, they can intercede for us still here on Earth. We can pray to them so that they can offer our requests to God, much like how we can pray for each other’s intentions, but more powerful.

God hears all of our prayers, so in essence we can just go straight to Him, but a consistent theme in how God does things is that He appears to want to do things in cooperation with us. That’s love, I guess.

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