I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe. (Ephesians 1:18-19a)
St. Paul prays that the eyes of our hearts may be enlightened—that we might see the hope to which we are called. That’s exactly what this final part of the series is about: learning to see with new eyes in a dark world.
This sermon series is essentially about the sickness of our time—you might call it a kind of heart disease—a sickness not of the muscle, but of the soul. In Part 1, I talked about the symptom: the outrage industrial complex that is poisoning our world. Part 2 was the diagnosis: the sin of lust for power that leads to dehumanization. Today, in the final installment, I turn toward the cure: toward hope, vocation, and saintly living, toward our calling to be ordinary disciples, like the saints of every age.
The subtitle of this sermon series is faithful living in a troubled world—how to keep our souls steady when the storm is blowing around us. In the first sermon, I reminded us of Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon: “Seek the welfare of the city in which you live… for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” The prophet teaches that the antidote to outrage is not withdrawal or contempt but engagement—building, planting, blessing. Then we looked deeper, at the disease beneath outrage: humanity’s ancient lust for power. From Eden to Dachau, from the serpent’s whisper to the propaganda of totalitarian regimes, we saw how the will to dominate dehumanizes others and corrodes the soul. And now, on this feast of All Saints, we turn from the sickness to the cure. The saints are proof that faithful living is possible. They are those who, in every generation, refused both the lies of the serpent and the logic of Babylon. They are the ones who answered the temptation to power with humility, countered the culture of outrage with mercy, and faced the fears of their times with love and trust in God.
The Beatitudes: Jesus’ Portrait of the Saints
The Beatitudes are startling in their simplicity: “Blessed are the poor… the hungry… the sorrowful.” The world says, “Blessed are the powerful and the popular.” But Jesus looks at the overlooked and says, “You are the ones God blesses. The Beatitudes are Jesus’ portrait of the saints—people who live even now knowing the nearness of God’s Kingdom.
In the upside-down kingdom Jesus brings, sainthood is not about moral perfection or pious detachment—it’s about radical belonging and radical love. The saints are not people who lived flawless lives; they are people who lived faithfully imperfect ones. They loved when it cost them. They sought peace when the world offered only hate and violence. They held to truth when lies were safer. They believed mercy was stronger than domination.
Jesus’ Beatitudes are not so much a list of virtues; they are more the description of a new kind of humanity. Jeremiah prophesied: “I will put my law within them, and write it on their hearts.” The Beatitudes are what life looks like when that law, to love God and love your neighbor, is written on our hearts. To live this way—to be poor in spirit, hungry for righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker—is to live the life of the saints.
Ordinary Saints in Extraordinary Times
When we hear the word saints, we might picture marble statues or stained-glass windows glowing in a church. But the heart of this feast is not something ethereal—it is something ordinary. The word “saint” simply means “holy one”—and “holy” doesn’t mean flawless or far-away. It means set apart for God’s purpose.
The saints are ordinary people who let extraordinary grace flow through them. They are the ones who make God’s compassion visible in their own corner of the world. They are the antidote to the outrage industrial complex—the quiet revolutionaries who refused to let hatred have the last word. They are the opposite of the lust for power—the humble servants who wash feet, heal wounds, and speak the quiet truth.
Think of Francis of Assisi, who heard God say “Rebuild my church” and did it not with wealth or weapons but by embracing poverty and joy. Think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who faced the Nazi machine with prayer and truth and paid for it with his life. Think of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who danced and forgave and preached about joy in the ashes of apartheid. Think of the nurse who keeps vigil through the night beside a patient’s bed, the teacher who refuses to give up on a struggling student, the neighbor who keeps knocking on the door of reconciliation…
These are the saints. They are people who, in their own time and place, seek the welfare of the city, resist the lust for control, and choose compassion over contempt. And if we have eyes to see, we’ll recognize that same light shining in one another—because the call to be saints did not end with them. It continues with us.
The Saints’ Revolution
The cure to the disease around us is to embrace the way of the saints—a quiet, defiant revolutionary way of mercy. This is what Jesus commands us to do:Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you.
That is not giving up; that’s not passivity. To love your enemy is not weakness—it is the most radical and powerful act of freedom imaginable. In a world addicted to revenge, blessing the one who curses you is to declare: “Your outrage and hatred and fear do not rule me.” Jesus’ revolution doesn’t happen through conquest but through compassion. It doesn’t march under banners of ideology but under the sign of the Cross. It is slow, small, and often unseen—mustard-seed like—but it endures when empires fall.
The Cloud of Witnesses
Hebrews tells us we are “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” They’re not watching us like judges from above; they’re cheering us on like fans watching a Husker game. Every generation adds new names to that cloud—people who chose faithfulness over fear.
And if we listen for them, here’s what they tell us:
The saints would remind us that holiness is not a relic of the past but a calling for the present. Our task is not to admire them but to join them. Sainthood isn’t a museum, it’s a relay race—and the baton has been passed to us.
What Saintly Living Looks Like Today
So what does “saintly living” mean in 2025? It means turning off the noise of the outrage machine long enough to listen to a neighbor’s story. It means refusing to post that angry comment. It means refusing to dehumanize someone whose politics you dislike. It means volunteering at a shelter, supporting those who are hungry, mentoring a child, or reconciling with someone from whom you’ve been estranged. It means practicing humility in a world that celebrates self-promotion. It means simply being kind in a season of cruelty.
Saintly living isn’t about escaping the world—it’s about inhabiting it with grace. It’s about planting gardens of hope where others sow despair. It’s about building houses of mercy in the midst of a culture of brutality. It’s about remembering, every day, that our welfare is bound to the welfare of our neighbor.
Dorothy Day, one of our modern saints, is quoted as saying: “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.” She knew that sainthood isn’t about halos, isn’t about being otherworldly—it’s about costly, daily love.
The Communion of Saints: A Vision of Hope
All Saints’ Day isn’t just about remembering the dead; it’s about reclaiming our identity as the living Body of Christ. The communion of saints is the great mystery that binds us together—across generations, across cultures, and across the gate of life and death. It means that when we come to this table, we are not alone. When we gather at the table, time folds in on itself: St. Francis and St. Julian are there, your grandmother who prayed for you is there, the unnamed faithful who sought the welfare of their city are there. Together with them, we taste the banquet of the kingdom that Jesus promised. That’s what gives us courage to keep going—to keep building, planting, blessing—even when the world feels like Babylon and the serpent’s whisper becomes a shout. We are not alone in this work. The saints surround us, Christ strengthens us, and the Spirit renews us.
A Blessing for the Journey
So, my beloved friends, as I wrap up this series, I’ll repeat the refrain one more time:
The cure is not a policy or a program. It’s not a clever strategy or a spiritual escape hatch. The cure is a way of life—a way of being in the world that looks like Jesus. It’s the life of the saints. And it’s the life we are called to live. The prophets, the saints, the disciples…they all proclaim to us that the story doesn’t end in Babylon; it ends in the New Jerusalem.
Let the Beatitudes be our marching orders for the battle of love, mercy, and compassion. Let the saints be our mentors. Let the Spirit write God’s law upon our hearts. And may we all one day be counted among that great cloud of witnesses—those who lived not perfectly, but faithfully, who sought the welfare of their city, who refused to bow to the idols of their times, who believed that mercy is stronger than might, and who discovered that love, even in death, never ends.
May the eyes of your heart be enlightened, that you may know the hope to which God has called you, the riches of God’s inheritance among the saints, and the immeasurable greatness of God’s power in those who believe. Go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit, all you saints of God.
Here are the links to Parts 1 and 2 of this series:
The Outrage Industrial Complex: Faithful Living in Troubled Times Part 1
It’s not the Apple: Faithful Living in Troubled Times Part 2
(Artwork: “The Beatitudes” by Joseph Matar.)
