All the Saints
Today we celebrate all the millions of people who have reached heaven, even if they are unknown to us. Saint is he who has reached heaven, some have been canonized and are therefore proposed by the Church as examples of Christian life.
The communion of saints means that they actively participate in the life of the Church, through the testimony of their lives, through the transmission of their writings and through their prayer. They contemplate God, praise him and do not stop caring for those who have remained on earth. The intercession of the saints means that they, being intimately united with Christ, can intercede for us before the Father. This helps a lot with our human weakness.
This day is an opportunity that the Church gives us to remember that God has called us all to holiness. That being holy is not having a halo on your head and performing miracles, but simply doing ordinary things extraordinarily well, with love and for the love of God.
The first news we have of the cult of martyrs is a letter that the community of Smyrna wrote to the Church of Philomelio, communicating the death of their holy bishop Polycarp, in the year 156. This letter talks about Polycarp and martyrs in general. From the content of this document, it can be deduced that the Christian community venerated its martyrs, who celebrated their memory on the day of martyrdom with a celebration of the Eucharist. They gathered at the place where their tombs were, making clear the relationship that exists between the sacrifice of Christ and that of the martyrs.
The veneration of the saints led Christians to erect large basilicas over the tombs of the martyrs, such as that of Saint Peter on the Vatican Hill, that of Saint Paul, that of Saint Lawrence, that of Saint Sebastian, all of them in Rome. .
The stories of the martyrs were written in books called Martyrologies that served as the basis for writing the Roman Martyrology, in which all the information on the saints officially canonized by the Church was concentrated.
When the persecutions ceased, the memory of the martyrs was joined by the cult of other Christians who had witnessed to Christ with an admirable love without reaching martyrdom, that is, the holy confessors.
Before the 10th century, the local bishop was the one who determined the authenticity of the saint and his public worship. Then the intervention of the Supreme Pontiffs became necessary, who established a series of precise rules to carry out a canonization process, with the purpose of avoiding errors and exaggerations.
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