Father Joseph Illo, pastor of Star of the Sea parish in San Francisco, gave a 17-minute homily on Sunday, November 1, All Saints Day.

We have some relics of saints on our altar – St. Liberata, Dominic Savio, St. Pius X, St. Phillip Neri, Jacinta and Francisco, the Fatima seers, St. Benedict.

There are over 10,000 canonized saints, but we believe there are many more.

For our school, we had three Carlo Acutis – easy because you just had to wear jeans and a T-shirt. We had 25 Blessed Virgin Marys.

We ask the saints to pray for us, we study their lives. Good to get into the biographies of the saints. There is Butler’s Lives of the Saints, the Roman martyrology. You can google a saint on the saint’s day and get a good account from Wikipedia.

I want to quote actual saints:

St. Justin Martyr (d.164) “We expect that our own bodies will be revived…”
St. Cecilia (d.230) “To die for Christ is not to sacrifice one’s youth, but to remew it.” (She died at the age of 16)
St. Athanasius (d.373) the great bishop of Alexandria “It is man’s glory to have been made, lost and then found again….”
St. Augustine (d.430) “We have been promised something we do not yet possess.”
St. Maximus the Confessor (d.662) God made us so that we might partake of His divine nature and share in His eternity….”
St. Dominic (d.1221) “I shall be more useful to you after my death….”
St. Thomas More (d.1535) “If the death of saints can be glorious in the sight of God, it can never be shameful….”
St. Teresa of Avila (d.1582) “Be joyful for there is someone who loves your God as He deserves….”
St. John of the Cross (d.1591) “The endurance of darkness is the preparation for great light….”
St. Phillip Neri “My Jesus, if you want me, cut the fetters that keep me….”
St. Francis de Sales (d.1622) “We must fight our battle with the knowledge of fear and hope, but hope is always stronger….”
St. John Vianney (d.1859) “The soul can feed only on God….”
St. Damien of Molokai (d.1889) “In the face of the two real dangers that surround me I repeat, ‘I will place all my hope in You, Lord….”
St. Therese of Lisieux (d.1897) “You alone, O Jesus could satisfy a soul who needed to love even to the infinite….”
St. Faustina (d.1933) “Jesus, I trust in You….”
St. Maximilian Kolbe (d.1941) “Shall the urge for total and complete happiness inherent in human nature be the only need to remain unfulfilled and unsatisfied? No. Even this longing for eternal life can be fulfilled by the eternal God….”
St. John Paul II (d.2005) “What really matters in life is that we are loved by Christ and that we love Him in return….”