The name of the Solemnity we hold today: All Saints, reveals us something of our God: He is hardworking. He has been working so hard on women and men over centuries that the Church has had to say: it is impossible to name all people who have become saints. It is an echo of what Saint John the Apostle saw in his vision: “A huge number, impossible to count, of people from every nation, race, tribe and language.”
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! At the beginning of the Gospel passage for this celebration Saint Matthew wrote that: “Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up the hill.” Then looking at those crowds “he began to speak. He taught them.” However let’s remember that he wasn’t an ordinary teacher. He was God incarnated. When God speaks he creates by his word, like in the book of Genesis, where we read of God creating the Universe. That same book of Genesis tells us also that on the seventh day God rested. However let’s treasure the belief that He didn’t retire after that seventh day. After creating the wonders of the Universe, He has been kept busy by some stubborn creatures: us, human beings, who have done “miracles” to spoil the grandeur God has envisaged in us. The whole of the salvation history, which has been recorded in the Holy Scriptures, tells the story of the hardworking God who can’t sit still at the finish but is involved along the journey of men and women of all ages. The saints, whom we honour today, are in fact proving that. They are not heroes to be admired, though some of them were heroes even at the young age, but they are our friends who through their example and intercessions arouse in us trust in God. Without that trust God is kept at distance but when we trust him there is a loving relationship established. This loving relationship becomes the space where holiness flourishes. How often we say of the parents when they welcome a newborn baby that they bloom with this newcomer. How often we say when a man falls in love with a woman that they are in bloom. It happens when they give and receive each other. God has given himself to us: “Take this all of you and eat of it, for this is my Body… Take this, all of you and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my Blood….” He hasn’t done this one but He has been doing it all the time because every week, and in fact every day, needs to be a repeated commitment to this loving relationship.
            Although we don’t need to face “the great persecution” of which we heard in the first reading but every day and all life circumstances are our opportunities to let God work on us. The All Saints whom we honour today didn’t become saints in heaven. On the contrary they became saints on this planet where God is still at work. He indeed is hardworking God.

            Listening to the Gospel passages in the resent weeks we may feel like the end of the financial year. Tax collectors pop up everywhere, don’t they?  If we feel secure right now it is simply because there are twenty centuries separating us from them. If we had lived at that time we wouldn’t have felt secure at all. Zacchaeus whom we meet in the Gospel this Sunday confessed to fabricating false financial accusations against people in order to confiscate their properties. If he was so wealthy it was because he was very “professional and successful” at that. He was a corrupted and depraved man. He hurt lots of people.
            If we have got a soft spot for Zacchaeus now it is because we know the end of his story. We know of his repentance. However the people who saw Jesus going to Zacchaeus house they didn’t know that. What they knew was that the tax collector didn’t fit to their society. Because of what he did they wanted him out. They thought that without him they would be a better community. I can understand them though I disagree with them on that. My disagreement comes from observing Jesus who went to the man who was despised by all. In Jesus I see an expression of what we heard of God in our First Reading from the book of Wisdom: “You spare all things because all things are yours, Lord, lover of life, you whose imperishable spirit is in all.”
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! We don’t know what happened to Zacchaeus after that encounter with Jesus. We can only hope that his neighbours didn’t stigmatise him for good; that they embraced him with the compassion Jesus exhibited instead.
All people want to create good societies. However now there is a trend to have societies of perfect people. Maybe that’s the time for us to speak of perfection in the Biblical understanding. In the Gospel of Matthew we read: “You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” If we go to the beginning of creation story we find in the book of Genesis the serpent telling the first parents: “For God knows that when you eat from the tree your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.” Both sentences seem to be similar but the first leads to life and the second leads to death. The first parents got hooked on the idea of being equal to God. That’s impossible. That’s selfish. That’s arrogant. Life cannot be built on impossible, selfish and arrogant.
What Matthew speaks of is perfection which means compassion which doesn’t exclude anyone, even our enemies. It is perfection we can see in the Good Samaritan. It is perfection we can see in the father of the prodigal son. It is perfection we see in Veronica during Jesus’ way of the cross.
We are blessed, here in Australia, to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world. However some recent research indicates that in terms of donating to the charities we are not on the top of the list. On the contrary when it comes to donating we behave as if we were very, very poor. Our wealth is not only about donating but it should be also about giving an example of embracing the vulnerable. October is known in the Catholic Church as the month of the Rosary but in the wider society it is also Down Syndrome Awareness Month. Do you know that in the U.S. 90% babies who are detected to have the Down Syndrome are aborted? Early this year in a magazine there was an article that Down Syndrome people are at risk of extinction at the hands of science which has provided parents with the tests to find out the condition of the child. In China they have started speaking about the Last Downer as nearly all babies with the Syndrome are aborted. It will contribute to creating the society of “physically perfect” people but it will also impoverish our society. We will become less compassionate, less understanding, and less supportive. We can become the society where the repented Zacchaeus wouldn’t be embraced. That’s why we hear these words from the book of Wisdom: ““You spare all things because all things are yours, Lord, lover of life, you whose imperishable spirit is in all.” Hopefully we can get hooked on the being “lovers of life” in order to become “perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.”

orAt the beginning of the twentieth century a group of tourists visited the Beethoven’s house in Germany. The guide showed them the piano on which the genius had composed his Moonlight Sonata. A woman in the group immediately sat down and played some bars from the sonata. Then the guide told the group that Paderewski, a great composer and pianist, had recently been shown the piano. The woman gushed, "And I bet he sat down and played just as I did." The guide said, "No, Madam, he said he was not worthy to touch those keys."
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The Pharisee from the Gospel we have just heard and the woman from the story could have a great conversation as they share similar qualities: egoism and pride. However I doubt they could have a conversation, as a conversation involves listening to the other person.
When we evaluate the prayer of the Pharisee it is a beautiful prayer in itself. He starts by saying: “I thank you Lord.” In Greek it sounds even better: eucharistô soi. That’s the word we use for our Sunday gatherings: Eucharist. The Pharisee acknowledges that everything he has comes from God. He thanks God for preserving him from sins. It is not a bad prayer. On the contrary it is a prayer which was prayed by Jews at that time and still they pray it in their synagogues. It is a beautiful prayer, though the attitude of the praying man spoilt it. He was not praying to God. He “said this prayer to himself.” He was like the Queen from the Snow White fairy tale saying: “Mirror, mirror on the wall…” That’s why there was a distance between him and the tax collector. How different it was to what Jesus exhibited in his ministry. Jesus went to Mathew and Zacchaeus, who were tax collectors too. Jesus dined with sinners. Jesus even spoke to an adulteress woman and he allowed a prostitute to touch his feat. Why? Because without a helping hand no one can become a saint. That’s what Saint John Paul II reminded all Catholics in his document on Mercy published 36 years ago: “The Church must consider it one of her principal duties, to proclaim and to introduce into life the mystery of mercy, supremely revealed in Jesus Christ. Not only for the Church herself as the community of believers but also for all humanity. This mystery is the source of life.” The obvious goodness of the Pharisee unfortunately didn’t flow into others. He was like the Dead Sea. In the Holy Land there are two big water reservoirs: The Sea of Galilea and the Dead Sea. Both of them are enriched by the same water of the Jordan River. The difference that makes the Sea of Galilee full of life and that makes the Dead Sea … dead, is that only the Sea of Galilee allows the water to flow out. The Dead Sea doesn’t allow its water to flow out. It keeps accumulating it. The only way the water can get out is by evaporating. That’s why over millennia it has become so salty and dead. If our goodness, if the grace we receive from the Lord ends with us, if it doesn’t flow out to others we become like the Dead Sea, like the Pharisee and like that woman: spiritually and humanly dead. We don’t extend a helping hand to other to raise them from their sins.
My Dear Friends! The grace and mercy we receive from the Lord are like the Jordan River which gives life. As believers of Christ we have a great contribution to make to each other and to the wider society. Especially now as our society instead of mercy which leads to conversion and change of life, says to sinners: “You are OK. The majority of us have agreed that your conduct is from now acceptable.” It doesn’t give the same joy, freedom and peace which we can see in the contrite tax collector from today’s Gospel.
I would like to highlight a couple of insights in his attitude. Firstly, let’s turn to the original Greek language again. There we read that the tax collector was defining himself as the sinner, not a sinner. He didn’t look at the other people’s sins to feel better himself. On the contrary, in the honesty of his conscience he turned to God and he acknowledged himself as the sinner because he was overwhelmed by God’s goodness and love for him. Secondly he asked for mercy. That’s a dangerous request because God will attend to it, like in Gospel passage of the Good Samaritan.  God will be moved to the depth of his being, that’s what compassion means, and he will come to our aid. The question however is this: Do we really want to be changed? Do we have the desire of the tax collector from today’s Gospel to be raised out of our sins? Or maybe we are just expecting God to say that sin is from now on OK?
That woman from the story who proudly approached the piano of the great Beethoven is a reminder for us to approach our own life, which was created by the greatest genius:  the merciful and loving God, with humility and openness to his Holy Spirit.

            What does it mean to “pray continually”? To illustrate it let me give you a story. A married man goes on a business trip. He is away from his wife and his children. However when other people go to a night club he refuses. During brakes between meetings he is on the phone to his family. When others go sightseeing he goes to a souvenir shop to get presents for his wife and children. He is physically away but at the same time he conducts himself as a husband and father. He is aware of who he is. People who pray continually are the ones who are always aware of being disciples of Christ, and conduct themselves accordingly.
            My Dear Friends! If we are surprised when Jesus asks us to pray continually it means that we have separated prayer from life. It means that when we put a prayer book aside, or when we put the rosary into our pocket, or when we step outside the church, we shut God out.
Jesus is an example of someone who prayed continually. Does it mean that he was always on his knees? Well, he did a lot of walking but he walked where his heavenly Father wanted him to walk. He did a lot of talking but he spoke what his Father wanted him to speak. He even dined with sinners but he was not celebrating their sins or participating in their sins. He loved them to conversion. Jesus showed us an example of integrity which doesn’t separate prayer from life. If prayer is separated from life, if who we are at prayer differs from who we are at home, at school, at work, on holidays etc. we end up doing both: prayer and life, badly.
It would be useful now to ask yourself: What do I pray for? We all know this part of Our Father: “Thy will be done” don’t we? However if we assessed our prayers how often they can be actually summed up as: “Thy will be changed.” Superficially the parable of the poor widow seems to support such an idea: Don’t stop praying and you will make God give you want you want. The Church in her 2000 year-journey has realised this struggle we face, that’s why the opening prayer for this Mass was: “Almighty ever-living God, grant that we may always conform our will to yours.” Charles Péguy, a French writer once confessed: “For 18 months I wasn’t able to pray Our Father because I couldn’t accept his will.” Isn’t an honest confession? However it is also a confession of a person having a desire to accept the will of God.
My Dear Friends! If in your conscience you discern that your prayer is more like saying to God: “Thy will be changed” but at the same time, deep down, you realise that it is not the way to proceed, I would like to direct you to Our Blessed Mother.  Charles Péguy said: “For 18 months I wasn’t able to pray Our Father because I couldn’t accept his will. That’s why I prayed to Mary.” Why? Because Mary didn’t separate prayer from life, that’s why she did both beautifully. Her prayer was beautiful and her life was beautiful. Mary will support us “not to lose heart” when the world around us preaches that surrendering to God’s will is waste of one’s life. It is not a waste of life like it wasn’t waste of life when that married man refused going to nightclubs or when he spent his free time on the phone to his wife and shopping for his children. On the contrary he was witnessing to the happiness of having those people in his life. Don’t be like the wife of Lot who though running away from the sinful city of Sodom at the same time thought that she was going to miss something of the “thrill’ which the people of the place indulged themselves in. She turned back and then she turned into a block of salt. Sometimes we may feel like that too. We say that sin is bad but we also envy some of the “thrill” of those who indulge themselves in immoral behaviour.
Surrendering to the will of God means that I have discovered Christ’s love, mercy and grace offered to me. It means that I have come to love the One who loved me first. My life is not a miserable one; on the contrary it is a happy one because I have God in my life.

            In Rome there is a building called Pantheon which originally was a temple dedicated to all gods. One could say that Romans were very tolerant. They didn’t mind your god or gods providing you were prepared to worship theirs as well. At some stage they even offered to include Jesus Christ among those other gods. Jesus would be worshiped freely providing that Christians would also worship other gods. No more persecutions. No more hiding. A good deal, isn’t it? But Christians refused. Were they crazy? Or were they intolerant?
            Let’s look at our second reading. We find St Paul there as a prisoner: “It is on account of the Good News, - he wrote – that I have my own hardships to bear, even to being chained like a criminal.” Why couldn’t Paul simply include other gods in his believing system? He could have his freedom and opportunity to keep doing his ministry. All he had to do was to be so called ’tolerant’ by worshipping other gods. He explained it this way: “I bear it all for the sake of those who are chosen, so that in the end they may have the salvation that is in Christ Jesus and the eternal glory that comes with it.”
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Can you remember Naaman from the first reading? He came from a pagan country to see Prophet Elisha in order to be healed of leprosy. When he was healed he made a strong statement: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.” The God who healed Naaman the leper became visible, became a human being in Jesus Christ born of the Virgin Mary. I am deeply moved by simplicity of that man Naaman. He couldn’t stay in the land where he was cured. But before returning to his home country he asked to be allowed to take some soil with him so that back home he could have a sacred place covered with that dirt from the Holy Land to keep remembering that the God who gave the Holy Land to the people of Israel is the only God. If Paul and those first Christians refused to worship other gods it was because they treasured the great things God did in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. They were convinced that Jesus’ death and resurrection cannot be compromised. They wanted to witness to others how much God did for them.
The event we had in the Gospel captures that well. The cured leper comes back to Jesus glorying God. Out of that group of ten, who was right then? One man or the majority? Bishop Fulton Sheen, an evangeliser from the previous century, who had a deep faith and a sharp mind once said: ‘Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.’ Twenty centuries ago when everybody was religious, one way or the other, the Christian way of believing triggered some ferocious persecutions as it challenged that tolerant way of believing in all gods. The world we know is different. It is not a religious world any more. That’s why our society is not so much tolerant to religion as simply indifferent. However once God is not included in the picture it is the human being who replaces God. It is the human being who starts deciding what is good or evil. It is the human being who demands others to obey the new principles of good and evil. Bishop Sheen prophetically some decades ago articulated: ‘Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote.’ I believe his words are worth remembering. ‘Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote.’
            My Dear Fellow Believers! Naaman returned home with some soil from the Holy Land in order not to return to his old mentality but to remember that there is only one God and he is to be loved, worshipped and listened to. Jesus didn’t send his followers with bags of sand from the Holy Land but he gave them the Church. The Church is our sacred place now. It is not a place of hiding from the wicked world but it is the place from which radiates our witness for the only God who manifested himself in life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is to be loved, worshipped and listened to.

            Do you know that mulberry trees grow in Victoria? It means that we can check how big our faith is by uprooting and planting them in the middle of the Port Philp Bay. It could even distract the crowds from the Grand Final this weekend.
            My Dear sisters and Brothers! How big is your faith? If it is as big as a mustard seed you can do that. Maybe I should rather say as small as a mustard seed because the seed is indeed very small. However before we start measuring up our faith let’s ask ourselves a few question?

1. Did Jesus increase his Apostles’ faith?
2. When did he increase his Apostles’ faith?
3. How did he increase his Apostles’ faith?

Let me use a couple of situations which contain answers to those questions?
The first situation is taken from a movie called Risen. The movie is inspired by the events which followed Jesus’ crucifixion. On Sunday morning it is reported to Pilate that the body of Jesus went missing. The governor orders an officer to find the body. The tribune captures Bartholomew, one of the Apostles. By the way I hope that St Bartholomew has got a sense of humour because in the movie he is not the sharpest tool in the shade. Anyway the tribune attempts to frighten the Apostle by describing the crucifixion. You can see that Bartholomew freezes at the graphic images of nails going through his wrists and feet or the long-time of slowly suffocating on the cross. Then the officer says: “What have you got to say now?” Bartholomew slowly lifts his head, his face brightens up and he stretches his arms to the officer saying: “I’m ready. Take me.” By the look of the officer you can tell that he thought that the Apostle was not the sharpest tool in the shade indeed. Or we can ask an additional question: Was there something else going on?
The second situation is taken directly from the Bible. That’s the story of another Apostle: Thomas. Can you remember his honest words: “I refuse to believe?” But he did come to believe. Among some Christians he is even called the Believing Thomas. What happened then? Was Bartholomew simply not the sharpest tool in the shade? Was Thomas not the sharpest tool in the shade? Or was there something else going on?
My Dear Believing Fellow Catholics! Jesus said in the Gospel: “Ask and it will be given you.” “Lord increase our faith” asked the Apostles and Jesus did it. When and how? After three days in the tomb by coming to his Apostles. Then they realised that possibilities of faith are not measured by what the believer can do but by what can be done by the Lord and God in whom the believer believes. Our Church is built not on some inspiring or uplifting stories but on the event of Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection. We place our little faith, which can be even smaller than a mustard seed, in the Son of God who “for us and for our salvation: Was crucified, died and was buried, but hung on, that’s not the end, he rose again on the third day. He is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory.” The mystery of Jesus’ death, Resurrection and glorification reaches us as much as it reached his human body, for which the religious and secular authorities of Jerusalem so franticly searched in the days following the first Easter Sunday. Our faith is alive and strong not by our efforts but by the Risen Lord in whom we pace our faith.
That’s why I believe that the message of Divine Mercy reminded by life of Saint Sister Faustina is so important for our time. Can I ask you a couple of last questions today? Do you have a crucifix in your place? … What about a picture of the Risen Lord? … When faith falters in Christians the remedy is in rediscovering what increased the faith of the Apostles: the encounter with the Risen Lord, who is at the beginning of our believing and in the midst of our following. The image of Divine Mercy is an image of the Risen Lord, who evokes in us faith which can only be expressed by saying: “Jesus I trust in you.”