On Mon­day 1 and Tues­day 2 No­vem­ber, we will ob­serve the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. We are all called to be saints. As Pope Fran­cis has said: “Sanc­ti­ty is un­der­stood...not as a pre­rog­a­tive of the few: sanc­ti­ty is a gift of­fered to all, no one ex­clud­ed, by which the dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter of every Chris­t­ian is con­sti­tut­ed...it is in liv­ing with love and of­fer­ing one’s own Chris­t­ian wit­ness in every­day af­fairs that we are called to be­come saints.

“We are chil­dren of God,” and live in hope of one day see­ing God as he is. “On the feast of All Saints and be­fore the Day of the Dead, it is im­por­tant to think about hope. “The ear­ly Chris­tians used an an­chor as a sym­bol of hope, he said, and “to have our hearts an­chored up there where our loved ones are, where the saints are, where Je­sus is, where God is -- that is hope. That is the hope that doesn’t dis­ap­point...There are dif­fi­cult mo­ments in life, but with hope you go for­ward and keep your eyes on what awaits us. To­day is a day of hope; our broth­ers and sis­ters are in the pres­ence of God, and we, too, will be there in the Lord’s arms if we fol­low the path of Je­sus.” He re­minds us that “be­ing a saint doesn’t re­quire spend­ing long hours in prayer, but rather liv­ing life open to God in good times and in bad...We can be­come saints be­cause the Lord helps us. It is he who helps us.”

I urge you nev­er to lose hope. Pope Fran­cis has point­ed out that “even in the lives of the saints there are temp­ta­tions and sins, as demon­strat­ed by the life of David...Saint King David, a great sin­ner, but a re­pen­tant one...dur­ing the Chris­t­ian jour­ney, the jour­ney the Lord has in­vit­ed us to un­der­take, there is no saint with­out a past and no sin­ner with­out a fu­ture.”

And many of us would re­mem­ber the record in Acts (9) of the con­ver­sion of Paul the Apos­tle, who was known as Saul. He was on his way from Jerusalem to Dam­as­cus with a man­date to fur­ther per­se­cute Chris­tians. His dra­mat­ic en­counter with Christ and his con­ver­sion re­minds us that God’s grace is suf­fi­cient. Let us open our hearts to re­ceive it, to align our­selves with the risen Christ. Read Gala­tians 2:20.

“Al­ways, in every place, one can be­come a saint, that is, one can open one­self up to this grace, which works in­side us and leads us to ho­li­ness...Every step to­wards saint­hood makes us bet­ter peo­ple, free from self­ish­ness and be­ing closed with­in our­selves, and opens us to our broth­ers and sis­ters and to their needs.” (Pope Fran­cis).

But, as we know, this is not an easy task. “Bad house” will al­ways be call­ing us, as we say in T&T. This is why we must help each oth­er to stay on the right path. We need more role mod­els and men­tors in our com­mu­ni­ties.

As a Catholic, I grew up in a home in which we cel­e­brat­ed Hin­du fes­ti­vals with my Hin­du fa­ther. In­deed, it is be­cause of my par­ents that I em­brace all that is good in all re­li­gions. The Catholic Church en­cour­ages the Faith­ful to de­vel­op a con­tin­ued “re­la­tion­ship of open­ness and di­a­logue with the fol­low­ers of oth­er re­li­gions.”

My sib­lings and I - those of us who are cur­rent­ly in T&T, are once again prepar­ing my de­ceased fa­ther’s home for our an­nu­al cel­e­bra­tion of Di­wali there on Thurs­day 4 Nov. Di­wali, a cel­e­bra­tion of the vic­to­ry of dhar­ma, good over evil, light over dark­ness, knowl­edge over ig­no­rance, pro­vides us with an op­por­tu­ni­ty for a true “cul­ture of en­counter”.

The Catholic Church con­tin­ues to pro­mote in­ter­re­li­gious di­a­logue. As the Vat­i­can’s Pon­tif­i­cal Coun­cil for In­ter­re­li­gious Di­a­logue said in a Di­wali Mes­sage: “May the Tran­scen­dent Light il­lu­mine your hearts, homes and com­mu­ni­ties, and may all your cel­e­bra­tions deep­en the sense of be­long­ing to one an­oth­er in your fam­i­lies and neigh­bour­hoods, and so fur­ther har­mo­ny and hap­pi­ness, peace and pros­per­i­ty… may we, Hin­dus and Chris­tians, join to­geth­er with fol­low­ers of oth­er re­li­gions and with peo­ple of good will to fos­ter a cul­ture of in­clu­sion for a just and peace­ful so­ci­ety.”

Giv­en the many chal­lenges we face, let us pro­mote uni­ty in di­ver­si­ty, and build on what is com­mon among us. And, as COP26 com­mences soon, let’s pray for se­ri­ous ac­tion by world lead­ers.