On November 1 each year, we commemorate the memory of their lives and martyrs, that is, we remember how important their sacrifices and deeds were to Christian history.
All Saints’ Day is celebrated mainly in countries associated with the Western church tradition. With different customs and traditions, November 1 is celebrated in the following countries: Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chile, Ivory Coast, Croatia, Spain, France, Guinea, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, Peru, Poland, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo, Switzerland, Germany, and Lithuania. Some countries in Asia also celebrate All Saints’ Day, such as in the Philippines.
Often the greeting Mother Cabrini put at the end of her letters was:
“May the good Jesus bless you and, by His Most Holy Name, give you a high degree of holiness that will make you like flying to that height where you no longer notice the earth and its miseries.”
Let us find out what Mother Cabrini said in her Writings on Holiness.
From Free yourselves and put on wings
“She often used to say in her exhortations that “education is half holiness,” but not an education based solely on etiquette, or quiet living but based on the virtue of charity, which involves, in turn, humility, tolerance, meekness, acceptance of diversity and the ability to transcend everything in the one ideal of the Kingdom of God that must be built first of all within oneself and among their closest brothers and sisters.”
“In the demanding and difficult path of holiness, in the labors of evangelization, Mother Cabrini proposes the simple way of abandonment in God, trust in Providence, prayer and an ever-living love for one’s vocation. However, she does not neglect the help that can come from the religious community, Superiors, and Sisters who live the same experience.”
“We know by faith and we feel it irresistibly that the good God has special designs over each of us, special designs of holiness; it is certain that in addition to the natural dispositions relating to these designs, He has prepared for each one a series of graces that are proper to raise them to that degree of holiness, but the important thing is that we know and want to correspond to all these graces of God. We lack nothing on God’s part, each one corresponding according to his or her own talents received.”
p.228
“Charity lived day by day, moment by moment, in the stress of daily relationship, accepting without succumbing to the effort the challenge of self-mastery, nurturing the passion for “peace,” a virtue Mother Cabrini insistently recommends, becomes a true path to holiness because the common good, truth, justice, in addition to regulating relationships among people, mature them in an egregious way and make them open to heroism.”
“But holiness is a constant commitment to openness to God, it implies never losing the vision of the Kingdom and continually rectifying one’s course so as not to run aground in stagnant and treacherous waters.”