This week we will celebrate a fall Triduum of All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints, and All Souls: three days of honoring life, death, and resurrection among the people of the world.

The principal feast of All Saints is beloved by many as a means of honoring those who came before. This, however, is supposed to be the function of All Souls, in which we honor and remember those non-canonized saints of our lives.

Centering a day on the challenge of sainthood has a way of both disembodying us—making the saintly of something greater than humanity—while also too embodying us—making the saintly of all of the people we have ever known. This, of course, is the power of Christian sainthood. These are mortal men and women who were more or less like us, gifted like us, privileged like us, and their commitment to Christ reveals that, even for us, sainthood is possible.