...the Church asks us to contemplate the reaping of all the living sacrifices offered to God, the harvest to God of all the ripe fruits brought about by God’s love and grace among men...

November 1, feast of all saints

In the last few decades very many saints and blessed have been proclaimed; there has never been a time in the Church with so many canonizations, which have become a sign also of an extended “catholicity” of Christian witness. In spite of this, many persons inside the Church or interested in the Church feel that they do not know the saints as close to them, are unable to discern “God’s friend” — this is the marvelous patristic definition of a saint — in a next-door neighbor, in the Christian of everyday life. Perhaps this is so because we live in a culture that sets a premium on appearances, a world in which, as someone has said, “even holiness is measured in inches”: in that case many seek not the Lord’s disciple, but the successful ecclesiastic, the person able to attract crowds, the opinion leader with the current jargon of sociology, politics, economics, ethics on his lips, the media star sought for a cheap word on every kind of event, which makes him appear as the most eloquent, whether or not these follow the Lord.