The Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Pentecost - All Saints Day - November 3, 2024

SummaryMother Suzanne explores the communion of saints—the whole family of God, living and dead—as we celebrate All Saints Day. She shares the powerful story of Saint Perpetua, an early Christian martyr, to illustrate how saints are not merely historical figures but companions who journey with us through time and space, spurring us toward love and good deeds through the indwelling of God's Spirit.THE GOSPEL                                                                                                                                                            John 11:32-44When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."Artwork: The Raising of Lazarus, by Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834-1890)