The saints mentioned in today's first reading seem to be martyrs. The angel says to St. John: "These are they which come out of great tribulation: they have washed and made white their robes in the blood of the Lamb." First the righteous in Israel are presented to us, and then all the saints in heaven: "an immense multitude, which no one could count, of all nations, races, peoples and languages.". We also heard them celebrate the triumph of Christ, "they cry out with a loud voice: 'The victory belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!'". Finally, we learn a significant detail: an angel cries out to his companions to delay their work of devastating the earth until these righteous ones have been sealed: "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.".
All this gives us a precious insight into today's feast, All Saints, which celebrates all the unknown saints in heaven. All have been washed "in the blood of Christ"that is, in baptism, or baptism of desire for those whose lives, without explicit knowledge of Christ, demonstrated a real search for God. For the saved, as we have seen, include the righteous Jews and thus, by extension, all righteous non-Christians who have truly followed their conscience without enjoying the full revelation of Christ. We, as Christians, will be judged more strictly for having received this revelation.
This washing "clean in blood" also suggests a willingness to suffer: as the English martyr Thomas More told his daughters, we cannot enter heaven on a feather bed. It can be an explicit and bloody martyrdom or the martyrdom of every day, such as the daily abnegation that good parents live for their children or the sacrifices that faithful men and women make to reject any evil and thus follow their conscience.
Holiness consists in knowing that our salvation comes from Christ. We cannot rely on ourselves. Holiness is the fullness of salvation, not the fullness of our own achievements. But then, in their humility, the saints save the world. Just as the angels could not harm the earth until the saints had been sealed, so the presence of holy men and women holds back God's just punishment. Today's Gospel offers us the manifesto, the program of holiness: the Beatitudes, which may seem light and easy, but the more we consider them, the more we see their necessity and need.
