Pip: The unsung heroes of history never gave a TED talk, never trended, and yet — according to Psalm 19 — their voice goes out into all the earth. Convenient timing for a feast day.
Mara: That’s exactly where canicecnjoku takes us this week. The posts center on All Saints — who the saints really are, what made them, and what their example asks of the rest of us still in the fight.
Pip: Let’s start with the homilies themselves.
Mara: The central question both posts put on the table is this: who actually qualifies as a saint? Not just the canonized, officially-named ones — but the vast, anonymous crowd that no institution has ever catalogued.
Pip: And the anchor for that question comes from Psalm 19, quoted right at the opening of the English homily: “They have no speech; they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”
Mara: So the upshot is that silence is not absence. These are people whose witness traveled without a platform. The feast exists precisely to name what no registry could.
Pip: Which lands harder when you set it against the claim the homily directly refutes — that only a fixed number, one hundred and forty-four thousand, get through the door.
Mara: The first reading from Revelation answers that directly. The homily describes the crowd as so great that no one could count — individuals of all nations, races, peoples, and languages. The kingdom is not a waiting list with a cutoff.
Pip: That’s a meaningful distinction. Exclusivity is the doctrine being pushed back against here, and the scriptural counter is sheer, uncountable multitude.
Mara: The second reading, from First John, carries the argument forward. John writes: “Brothers, now we are the children of God, but it has not been manifested what we shall look like at the end.” The saints are already there; we are still becoming.
Pip: And the Beatitudes close the loop. The English homily lists the credential plainly — poor in spirit, merciful, pure in heart, persecuted — and notes that every saint falls into one or more of those categories. Not all of them, necessarily. One or more.
Mara: The Spanish homily, “honrando todos los santos,” frames the same arc with a phrase that becomes the title: they came, they saw, they struggled, and they conquered. It’s almost athletic — a race run by ordinary mortals.
Pip: Which is the pastoral point both versions are driving toward. The homily speaks directly to the person who feels invisible — working hard, unrecognized, convinced they don’t count.
Mara: And the answer given is not “try harder.” It’s that God already knows you are there. The homily puts it plainly: “You count, you mean a lot to him, and you are on His payment list.”
Pip: The same grace that carried the saints is described as still available. The finish line hasn’t moved; the race is still open.
Mara: Both homilies close with the same invocation — All Saints, pray for us — which pulls the triumphant church and the militant church into the same conversation across the boundary between them.
Pip: The living asking the already-arrived for company on the road. That’s the whole feast, really, in one line.
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Mara: What stays with me is the image of an uncountable crowd — every nation, every language — as the actual shape of holiness.
Pip: Ordinary people, no podium, voice traveling anyway. Next time we’ll see what else is moving through this site.
Peace be with you!
Maranatha!
