Feast of All Saints 2026
It may seem strange to you that we celebrate the feast of all saints on this day, the Sunday after Pentecost but we might rightly ask “what better day could there possibly be to make such a celebration? In the west, on the Gregorian calendar, it is common practice to celebrate all saints day on November 1st. For this reason we have a great cultural celebration on All Saints, or All Hollows Eve, AKA Halloween. However for the Orthodox the feast of All Saints is directly, intimately connected to the celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. So days and feasts and celebrations are ordered and placed in such a way that the Church is always teaching her children through every aspect of her life.
The feast of All Saints is placed on the Sunday directly following Pentecost to show us something and give us a glimpse into the life of the kingdom. Sanctity is made possible through the work of the Holy Spirit. Holiness is made possible through the work of the Holy Spirit. Saints are made possible through the descent of the Holy Spirit. In the life of the Church there are many many saints, in fact they are numberless. Yet each day of the church year we commemorate some of them, typically those who reposed or fell asleep on a particular day. Yet for other even more important saints we might celebrate not only the day that they died but other days as well such as the day they were conceived or the day they were born as we see with both St. John the Baptist as well as the Holy Virgin and Mother of God.
St. Paul speaks of all of the multitude of the saints as a “great cloud of witnesses.” A witness according to our Christian definition is one who witnesses or testifies to the truth of Jesus Christ. Our word witness comes from the Greek work for martyr. A martyr is one who boldly proclaims and bears witness to the truth of the gospel and the person of Jesus Christ. Those who died for their faith in Christ as well as those who lived righteously for their love of God. The martyr is one who is not turned away by any threats of imprisonment or punishment or torture or anything else, even death. Because to deny the Lord Jesus Christ is considered by the martyrs and saints to be much worse than death. It is the death of the soul. I should tell you that for the saints this applies not only to the teaching of Our Lord but to the teaching of His beloved bride, the Church, the body of Christ. The Church is the presence of Christ on earth. Her teaching is a reflection of God’s truth and goodness. So when someone rejects the clear and unchanging teaching of the Church they in fact reject Christ Himself.
Let us return to the saints for a moment. We are blessed greatly by hearing and reading and studying the lives of the saints. I wish that everyone who make a practice of always having a life of a saint that they are working through and these days we can easily find books translated into English as well as some websites with stories and biographies of the saints. And my brothers and sisters, each of these saints and each of their stories teach us something new and different. Each of them help us to grow in our own faith as we see their lives and their struggles and the unique ways that they brought their faith and love for Jesus Christ to life. No two saints are exactly the same just as no two humans are exactly the same. The Holy Spirit affects and inspires each person differently.
There is a short passage from the desert fathers that makes this point. “Abba (Father) Poemen said that Abba John said that the saints are like a group of trees, each bearing different fruit, but watered from the same source. The practices of one saint differ from those of another, but it is the same Spirit that works in all of them.” -Sr. Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers,
This is one of the reasons why it is so important to learn from the saints but we should never try to imitate them in the details of their lives and struggles. What might work for one person may actually hurt another. The beauty of our faith is that God gives each one of us exactly what we need to grow and become saintly. This may come as a surprise to you. You might have thought that sanctity and holiness are for some other special people. You might have thought that saints are born that way. All of this is false. We were all born with the same nature. It is the work of Satan to discredit your faith and your sonship, the birthright given to you through holy baptism. You were made to become saints. God gave you life in order for you to use that life as you choose, yet in reality He desires to know you and to implant His life deeply within you. He wants to have such an intimate union with us that we bring forth holy fruit. That we have the ability to feed others of the fruit of sanctity.
But it is really important to understand that you cannot and will not become holy through your own efforts if those efforts are undertaken apart from God. Because we are under the sway of the passions and evil desires. So our efforts have to be rooted in Christ and His Church. How often people come to confession and they say, “I will try to be less angry, I will try to have less lust, I will try to be more humble etc.” This completely misses the point. It sounds like self-help. Our way is the way of the saints, who try by drawing nearer to Christ on a daily basis. That is the way given to us by our great role models and teachers of the Christian life.
St. Macarius the great writes, “Whatever the soul may think fit to do itself, whatever care and pains it may take, relying only upon its own power, and thinking to be able to effect a perfect success by itself, without the co-operation of the Spirit, it is greatly mistaken. It is of no use for the heavenly places; it is of no use for the kingdom – that soul, which supposes that it can achieve perfect purity of itself, and by itself alone, without the Spirit. + St. Macarius the Great, Spiritual Homilies, Homily 24
We run to Christ on a daily basis to receive something that is foreign to our broken human nature. We run to receive the treasure of the grace of the Holy Spirit. This separates the saints from everyone else. Those who allowed the Holy Spirit to adorn the walls of their hearts now themselves adorn the walls of the churches throughout the world. May we all join them as one family of saints. AMEN.
Source: Sermons