All Saints Day – Stewardship Weekend November 1, 2026
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
How do we join them? How do we get to join the party of all the saints in heaven which we celebrate today? Can we buy our way in? You might run across people who accuse the Church of offering just that: a way to buy heaven. They point to our teachings about indulgences, our teaching on merit, or even the collection taken at Mass and say, “see, you guys think you can just give money and get into heaven.” Of course that’s not what we believe. No one can buy heaven and no one can earn it. Salvation is a gift from God received through faith.
Where the confusion comes in, however, is that that gift of salvation through faith is expected to work through love (cf. Gal 5:6). If salvation is a gift through faith that makes us like God, that means we too must act in love. All Saints Day celebrates the many unnamed saints – every soul in heaven – who has reached that final perfection of love.
And Jesus tells us how to join those saints in heaven: “Blessed are the poor in spirit… blessed are those who mourn… they who hunger and thirst for righteousness… the merciful… blessed are you when they persecute you. Why? “For your reward will be great in heaven.”
So we see that heaven is both a gift and a reward. The fact that it’s a reward is part of the gift; God is so good that he makes our free will part of how he saves us. God gives us the grace to do good things so that he can also give us rewards for the good things he made possible in the first place. The beatitudes are part of that gift – he lays out the kinds of actions and attitudes that help us accept the gift of salvation.
When you apply that to the daily practicalities of living a Christian life, do you know what you get? Rules. Expectations. Commandments. Precepts. If you start with those lists, however, if you are on the outside looking in, it might look like we’re telling people, “do these things and you’ll earn heaven.” If they don’t see the foundations of faith, the requirement of grace, and the proper definition of love, it’s easy to reduce the whole thing to some kind of contract or purchase: “do what we tell you and give us your money and you go to heaven.”
But here’s the truth. Even if you follow all the rules, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll go to heaven. Daily Mass, giving all your money to the Church or to the poor, saying your prayers… they aren’t enough to save you. They are a necessary part of how you’re saved, but they don’t cause salvation. “Necessary, but not sufficient” is the expression. Someone who has genuine faith will do what Jesus and his Church tells them to do, but doing those things is not always a guarantee of genuine faith. So, don’t forget that during what I’m about to say. You need faith and faith is a gift. If you have faith, however, then a key part of keeping that faith and expressing it is acting on it in concrete ways.
Just one of the concrete ways we do that is by supporting the Church. It just so happens that our fiscal year was finally closed out this past week, which means it’s time to provide the parish’s annual report to members of this parish. This is my once-a-year money homily.
You’ll find the written explanation and pie charts in the bulletin. Last year, we encouraged all parishioners to prayerfully update their support of St. Mary Magdalen. It was successful; we finally got out of the red. Thank you! It’s enabled good maintenance, employee raises, and allowed us to think ahead a little more. We continue to offer many programs and services because of your generosity and commitment. God’s kingdom is growing in Abbeville because of you!
As I explain in the bulletin, though, we will need to continue to improve our budget if we want to have long-term success. With the expected increase in population in our near future, it’s even more important that we prudently utilize our resources to rise to the occasion of evangelizing newcomers and strengthening the kingdom of God.
So, yes, I am asking you to consider giving more. On one level, it is a very direct and practical matter: we need money to keep operating. On another and much more important level, it is my duty as pastor to remind you that being Catholic, that having faith, that striving to get to heaven and become the saint God called you to be requires you to act with faith. By contributing to the needs of the parish, you are concretely expressing your trust in God’s providence and your willingness to sacrifice for the building up of his kingdom.
As our psalm says, “The Lord’s are the earth and its fullness.” Everything you have already belongs to the Lord. That’s the meaning behind the teaching, “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” Poverty of spirit is being detached enough from wealth to realize it’s God’s anyway so that giving it to the needy or to the Church is not about you losing stuff but about you using God’s stuff as God intended you to use it: for love… for the good of others.
Now look, I know not everyone has extra money. To that I say, giving to the Church and to the poor is kind of supposed to sting a little. If we don’t feel it in some way, it’s still good, but it’s not sacrificial, which means there’s still room for more faith and more love. Mother Teresa once received a large check from a millionaire. She asked him, “does it hurt you to give this much?” He laughed and said, “not at all, I won’t even notice it.” She slid the check back and said, “make it hurt.”
Before anyone gets outraged, however, I also know that some of you are in serious financial difficulty, so I will say that God does not want you to become destitute. You cannot give what you do not have. God does not want you to go without food and shelter because you’re being reckless. If you have very little, then maybe make a token gift, a tiny amount to express your desire to give.
So, I urge all of you to prayerfully consider your giving habits. Do you give every week, every month, or every year? Do you plan your gift, or just haphazardly toss in spare change? What percentage of your income can you commit to the Church? What percentage to the poor? I know few people still carry cash, so I urge you to use the website and set up automatic online giving. We also have QR codes on little cards by every door. You can scan the card to give and then drop it in the basket as a symbolic way of participating in the offertory collection.
Lastly, I need to stress that money is not the only way to give. The old saying is “time, talent, treasure.” The Lord knows we could use people who are willing to give time in labor, in visiting the sick, in serving the poor, in teaching the faith. There are also many talents which could benefit the church: craftsmanship, artistry, music, technology, networking, marketing, and so on. If you see work that can be done which you know how to do, please contact us to see about putting your gifts and our needs together for the sake of God’s kingdom.
Ultimately, the goal is to one day join the party of saints we celebrate today. No one can buy their way in, though, because the only currency which matters to God is love. Time, talent, and treasure, if kept to ourselves, can harden and darken our hearts, weigh us down, and blind us to love. But when spent for love, when time, talent, and treasure are used to express our hunger for righteousness, when they manifest our mercy to others, when they become tools of making peace, when we are poor in spirit enough to put our hearts, minds, abilities, and possessions in service to God, then blessed will we be, for our reward will be great in the kingdom of heaven. So great, in fact, that the very kingdom of heaven itself will be ours. And what is worth more than that?