By Ed Foley, OFM, Cap., November 1, 2026
This morning we stand on the threshold of a sacred, consequential, and unique Triduum. Not the one of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, but one that in its own ways is similarly about life, death, resurrection and eucharistic discipleship.
This unnamed Triduum is launched with today’s festival of All Saints
Takes a sober turn to remembering our beloved dead tomorrow|
On the feast of All Souls
And then dawns on the civic feast of Election Tuesday.
Three distinct moments, yet in our liturgical and moral imagination,
they fold into one another—
forming a single, holy movement of memory, mourning, and public responsibility.
So in this dawning triduum we find ourselves poised on the threshold between
what was, what is, and what might yet be.
On this glorious festival of All Saints
we lift our voices to celebrate the Church Triumphant
as well as the unheralded holy ones who yet walk among us.
Yet even now as the sanctuary glows with lights and flowers
And the soaring music raises our spirits
We feel the shadow of tomorrow—All Souls Day
when the church slows its breath, lights candles against the November chill,
and calls to mind our beloved dead:
those whose hands we held, and whose absence
carves an enduring, aching gap in our daily lives.
As pastoral theologian Herbert Anderson reminds us,
the delicate work of grieving always happens
in the fertile space between remembering and hoping
between honoring a treasured memory
and daring to anticipate a new, transformed future.
And so in the midst of this glorious festival
We also anticipate tomorrow with a remembering that cannot be static
nor a mourning that is quietist but galvanizing.
On All Souls, we will not only mourn those who have physically died
but also those among the living who have lost their energy for life
the weary, the crushed, the broken-hearted,
those whose spirits have been systematically exhausted
by economic instability, injustice, and the relentless noise of an anxious world.
And then comes Tuesday
To some, the ballot box feels entirely distinct from the altar.
As if our faith were a private sanctuary
and our citizenship a separate, worldly chore.
But in the geography of the Spirit, Tuesday is deeply, inherently revolutionary—
a moment when the collective voice of the people must be heard,
when power is held accountable to divine compassion,
and when the quiet longings of the vulnerable demand a vote.
We often suffer from a spiritual amnesia
that splits our world into neat, isolated categories:
the living here, the entombed dead somewhere far off;
the sacred inside these doors, the political out on the street.
Theologian Elizabeth Johnson brilliantly shatters this myth of separation
Writing that together, the living form with the dead
one single community of memory and hope.
We are a holy people touched by the fire of the Spirit,
summoned to go forth as companions
bringing the face of divine compassion into everyday life
and the great struggles of history—
wrestling with evil, and delighting even now
when fragments of justice, peace, and healing
gain, however small, a foothold.[i]
Consequently our ancestors in faith do not rest in passive, pious silence.
Rather the saints—both the named icons of history
and the unnamed grandmothers, laborers, and peacemakers of our own lives
were people who dared to imagine a radically different world.
They were holy subversives:
spiritual equivalents to Galileo pointing his spyglass to the heavens and
altering forever how humanity understood its place in the cosmos.
Analogously, the saints looked at the brokenness of their empires
and insisted on an alternative reality.
They looked through the lens of the Jesus Kingdom
and saw that the world as it is structured
is not the world as it must be.
Thus our celebrating the saints today is not a grateful journey into nostalgia
But a beckoning to listen for their song
singing back toward the darkness of our present world.
In their stalwart companioning, they urge us forward—
calling us to take up the unfinished work of love, equity, and peace that they championed in their own generations.
And what is that work?
What is the compass that guides our eucharistic discipleship
Lived out as what Vatican II called faithful citizens of this world and the next?
It is laid out on the mountaintop in today’s Gospel reading: the Beatitudes.
For centuries, pious commentaries have tried to tame the Beatitudes,
turning them into passive, domestic virtues—
gentle consolations for the crushed.
But as peace activist Father John Dear reminds us,
Jesus did not deliver the Sermon on the Mount
as a collection of sweet platitudes to comfort us in our complacency.
Delivered under the iron heel of Roman military occupation,
the Beatitudes were a direct, countercultural critique of empire
a tactical blueprint for active, nonviolent revolution
a manifesto of holy resistance.
The Beatitudes announce a breathtaking reversal:
- “Blessed are the poor in spirit” — a call to dismantle the pride, greed, and ruthless urge to dominate that drives our political and economic systems.
- “Blessed are those who mourn” — a refusal to look away from human suffering, channeling our grief over gun violence, poverty, and war into moral urgency.
- “Blessed are the meek” — not a call to submissiveness or weakness, but to disarmed, courageous, nonviolent strength that refuses to retaliate with the weapons of the oppressor.
- “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice” — a passionate, unyielding drive to confront and transform the very structures that keep tables meager and pantries empty.
Jesus does not say, “Blessed are the quiet onlookers”.
He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers“—
those who actively disrupt injustice to build real, lasting shalom.
Which brings this holy memory to the final day of this unlikely Triduum
And the liminal place of the ballot box.
If the Beatitudes are the blueprint of our baptismal calling
then voting is not merely a civic chore;
Rather it is an exercise of moral imagination and eucharistic stewardship.
This in turn renders our vote a sacred instrument
It is that civic sacramental where the cries of the marginalized
must find expression through our choices.
When we vote we are asked an uncompromising gospel question:
Whose flourishing am I voting for?
Is my ballot about my own comfort,
My own status, my own leverage?
Or do we cast our votes with the Beatitudes burning in our hearts?
And care for the poor aching in our bellies?
A beatitude vote is a vote for the protection of the earth,
the welcoming of the stranger,
the healthcare of the sick,
the dignity of the worker,
and the defense of democratic institutions
that protect the vulnerable from the whims of bullies and the boisterous.
It is to forefront the people who has lost their energy for life,
ensuring that our societal structures offer them breath, relief, and hope.
It is our chance to insist that mercy, justice, and truth are not mere ideals,
but the very foundation upon which our shared life must be built.
We carry into that voting booth the memory of the dead
who marched and bled for the right to vote,
the living saints who quietly toil for human dignity for all and the exhausted who need us to stand in the gap for them.
Having the courage to cast a Beatitude vote
Is supported by the communion of saints that surrounds us
nudges us, and supports us as we pray this November Triduum blessing:
May the silence of the beloved dead
settle gently upon our hearts,
not as a weight of grief,
but as a holy resonance calling us to life.
May we have the courage to carry their unfinished songs,
to cherish the tender places where their memory abides,
and to walk in the quiet, subversive footprint of their faith.
When the voices of empire, cynicism, and fear rise around us,
may the revolutionary fire of the Beatitudes light our minds.
May you be granted the fierce meekness to disarm hatred,
the holy restlessness to hunger after justice,
and the grace to lend voice and vote
to those whose strength has worn thin.
As we march toward Tuesday,
may our feet be steady on the pavement of history.
May we know that a great cloud of witnesses surrounds us,
whispering hope into the darkness,
guiding our hands toward mercy,
and blessing every step we take in service of the light.
Through Christ our Lord,
Amen.
[i][i]Elizabeth A. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints (New York: Continuum, 1998), p. 219.
If you’d like to listen to Fr. Foley’s homily for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time A, it is posted on the homepage of hiswebsite edwardfoleycapuchin.org.
Edward Foley, OFM, Cap., Duns Scotus Professor of Spirituality Emeritus and retired Professor of Liturgy and Music at Catholic Theological Union, has authored or edited 33 books. His works are translated into 9 languages. A celebrated preacher and presenter, he received a major grant from the John Templeton Foundation for Preaching and the Sciences and another from the Lilly Endowment. A recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, the North American Academy of Liturgy, the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, Aquinas Institute, and Barry University, as well as a preaching fellowship at Notre Dame University, he has lectured in over 70 dioceses throughout the English-speaking world.
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