November 1 is All Saints' Day. In the traditional Catholic calendar, this feast day always falls within the week following the feast of Christ the King, which traditionally was celebrated this past Sunday (though it has been moved in the modern liturgy to the end of November). In Pope Pius XI's great 1925 encyclical letter, Quas Primas, the Pope gave the reason why he mandated that Christ the King be celebrated annually on the last Sunday of October. It is that the holiness of the Saints that we celebrate on November 1 flows from the holiness of Christ our Sovereign King; thus the feast day of All the Saints follows quickly the feast of the Kingship of Christ.
Dom Guéranger, the famous Benedictine monk of the monastery of Solesmes in France, writes in his masterful work, L' Année liturgique [The Liturgical Year], that already in his time, some liturgists expressed the desire to reduce drastically the number and/or rank of feast days of Saints in the liturgical calendar in order to give more prominence to the temporal cycle based on the Life of Christ (that is, to highlight the specific liturgical seasons and make them more prominent). While we can see how this could flow from a genuine desire to give back to Christ His rightful place in the sacred liturgy, Dom Guéranger cautioned against it, stating that this desire was probably influenced by a certain faulty Protestant view of the place of the Saints in the Christian Faith.
Protestantism believes that the Christian should not give too much honour to the Saints, because in doing so, he removes honour from Christ. The same applies even in regard to the Blessed Virgin. If you give too much honour to the Virgin Mary, you take honour away from Christ her Son. Why does Protestantism embrace such a view? Because Protestant theology is based on a faulty either/or dialectic. We see this in various branches of Protestant thought:
either nature or grace
either faith or works
either Scripture or Tradition
either the authority of Christ or the authority of His Church
The Catholic Faith, however, is a both/and Faith. So in regard to the above, a Catholic would say:
we need both nature and grace, because grace builds upon nature
we need both faith and works, because as the Apostle James writes, "faith without works is dead"
we need both Scripture and Tradition, because the former is the written Word of God and the latter the oral Word of God
we need both the authority of the Church and the authority of Christ, because Christ exercises His authority in and through His Mystical Body and Bride, the Church
Ultimately, the Catholic both/and principle is based on the reality of the Incarnation: Christ is not either God or man; Christ is fully God and He is fully man.
Most heresies in the Church began precisely because one reality was exalted so high as to deny the corresponding counter reality. For example, Arianism denied that Christ is God, whereas Docetism denied that Christ truly became man. [Note: for an excellent summary of heresies from the first centuries of the Christian era to modern times, see the excellent work by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Flee From Heresy].
According to Dom Guéranger then, the reason why some liturgists were pushing for a reduction in the feasts of the Saints (in number and in rank) in the Church's liturgical calendar was because they had embraced the faulty Protestant understanding that the Saints detract us from Christ, instead of the Catholic teaching that the Saints lead us to Christ.
The holiness of the Saints is a mirror that reflects the triple holiness of God. The book of the Apocalypse ("Revelation" in modern Bibles) presents the reader with a very powerful and moving scene of what divine worship in Heaven is like:
And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats, four and twenty ancients sitting, clothed in white garments. And on their heads were crowns of gold. And from the throne proceeded lightnings and voices and thunders. And there were seven lamps burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. And in the sight of the throne was, as it were, a sea of glass like to crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four living creatures, full of eyes before and behind. And the first living creature was like a lion: and the second living creature like a calf: and the third living creature, having the face, as it were, of a man: and the fourth living creature was like an eagle flying. And the four living creatures had each of them six wings: and round about and within they are full of eyes. And they rested not day and night, saying: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come. -Apoc. 4:4-8
Thus the Scriptures present the three-fold holiness of God to be the object of worship in Heaven by the Angels and the Saints. The holiness of the Saints (and even of the angelic beings) is acknowledged in Heaven as having as its Source the triple holiness of God, the Blessed Trinity. This truth is reaffirmed by the Catholic Church in the Divine Praises that accompany Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament. The last invocation made in this beautiful prayer is:
Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints.
So the Church's Eucharistic rites affirm that to honour the Saints of God is not in any way to dishonour Christ; rather, on the contrary: we honour Christ even more when we honour Him in His Angels and Saints. This is why All Saints' Day is not at all a distraction from the holiness of Christ; All Saints' Day is a celebration of that holiness, as it overflows from Our Lord into His sanctified creatures.
