Happy All Saints’ Day
Photo courtesy of Sixteen Miles Out
November 1 is All Saints’ Day, a holy day widely celebrated in Western Christian tradition including the Lutheran Church, Methodist Church, and Roman Catholic Church, among other denominations. This day is meant to show honor and reverence to saints both canonized and unknown, and also give thanks to those who have guided others to Christ.
As we observe All Saints’ Day, we revisit True Fathers’ timely message, “Let’s Be the Person Who Has the Heart of Jesus Christ,” which he delivered in 1958 at the Seoul church headquarters in Korea.
Speech Excerpt:
Although time has passed, the pulse of Jesus Christ’s throbbing heart keeps its stroke through your heart and blood vessels, arteries, and veins today. Therefore, you should become the people who can represent the pulse of heavenly heart. Jesus has been waiting eagerly for 2,000 years for a person, who can bear the responsibility, like this taking his place. You must know that God has been waiting for 6,000 years...
What then can we do today? We must become friends of Jesus’ who can understand his situation and do something about it... Even when standing in a position where he had passed through the life of such sadness, the life of being hard up for clothing and the life of starvation, there was no person, a friend, who would participate in Jesus’ situation on the earth. That is why Jesus came to feel that only God is his friend, only God is his father...
Because Jesus realized that the providence of salvation that saves humankind would be destroyed if he cursed at this people for Heaven and judged for God, he could establish one standard of salvation. If Jesus had expressed his feeling of being mortified according to how he felt, and stood in a position of cursing and feeling bitter as a substitution for God, this world would have its hope all disappear. This world would have seen its end then...
Who are the Christians of the world today? They are the second Israel who is to restore the mistakes of the first Israel, and become the second chosen people... Today, we should be united. The time has come when we have to climb, stepping over denominational divisions, and must unite with God. The time has arrived when you have to possess the substantial entity of Jesus Christ after passing through the words... You should now understand what the words of the New and Old Testament mean...
Only responding to Heaven’s motion, and offering yourselves as the sacrifice of victory before the Father for the heavenly principles, will Jesus dissolve the hatred on this earth. God too will be able to dissolve hatred on this earth, and all humankind and all creation can enjoy the glory of triumph before God in response to Him.
Please do not think that you are standing in this situation by accident. Please do not think that you have inherited the altar of an inevitable course for historical fate. Only now when you get up, stepping on the barrier of sorrow that Jesus built ... and build an altar of triumph as a living sacrifice, will you become triumphant sons and daughters.
You can view the Vatican’s statement on All Saints’ Day 2023 here.