Becoming Fully Alive: The Thirty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time 2026

                                                       Becoming Fully Alive:

The Thirty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time 2026 

November 1, 2026

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Revelation7:2-14; Psalm 24; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

 

 

This feast of All Saints Day is a celebration of what God can accomplish in human beings when they allow divine grace to transform their lives. When we think of the saints, we often think of people who accomplished remarkable things, who gave great sacrifice for others, or who possessed a holiness that seems far beyond our own reach. We admire them and often hold them on a high pedestal. Saints have never been perfect or otherworldly; they are witnesses to God's generosity. Their holiness reveals what happens when God's grace is welcomed and allowed to transform a human life.

 

The Beatitudes reveal the type of people God calls us to become. It is not a recitation of who the saints were; it is a map for future life and a promise for those whose lives have begun to embody the Beatitudes as a way of being. We were created for communion with God and with one another. It is God’s way of calling us to a higher state of being. Heaven is the fulfillment of that calling: the blessedness of sharing God's life, where the love that we struggle to practice now is brought to its perfection.

 

We are invited to become fully alive in the generosity of God. We are called to become more human. Obeying rules and fulfilling religious obligation is expected, but holiness reaches deeper than outward behavior because it necessarily involves the transformation of our hearts, the deepening of relationships, the pursuit of our desires, and renewing the way we see other people. Jesus, through the Beatitudes, reveals what humanity looks like when it is open to God’s love. Jesus allows his way of loving to reshape our own humanity. Therefore, we do as Jesus did – welcome the excluded, forgive sins, heal the wounded, confront injustice, and put the needs of others before one’s own. Holiness does not separate us from our humanity but fulfills it. Saints did not reject the world; they immersed themselves in the struggles of the day. 

 

Our holiness demands that we allow a diminished humanity to be transformed by grace. How do we do that? Here are some examples. Instead of seeing others as competitors, we recognize the other as a person of dignity who is in communion with us. Instead of protecting ourselves at all costs and putting up barriers, we discover the freedom of generosity. Instead of grasping our grudges and resentments tightly, we become open to the idea of forgiveness. Instead of seeking recognition and superiority, we find meaning in humble service. Instead of turning a blind eye to someone’s suffering and allowing ourselves to become indifferent, we enter the chaos of another person and allow that person’s suffering to change us. Instead of treating differences as threats, we discover the delight of being in communion. Instead of living primarily for our own satisfaction, we recognize our responsibility to and for one another. Our holiness is the transformation of our humanity through full participation in the life and love of God. We are unfinished in our “becoming.” God is continually inviting us into a deeper, more generous, more loving way of life. Our lives become transformed because we become more deeply alive in the presence of God. 

 

We often begin to think about heaven because this month is for the remembrance of All Souls. Heaven is not simply the reward for having lived a good life. Heaven is not about a place or being in a better location. Heaven is the fulfillment of our relationship with God. It is the happy contentment of sharing in God’s life, knowing God as fully as we can, and loving without the limitations that we have in our life today. The Beatitudes is God’s way of preparing us for the fulness of heaven by transforming our lives here and now. 

 

Scripture for Daily Mass 

Monday: (Wisdom 3) The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace.

 

Tuesday: (Philippians 2) Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness.

 

Wednesday: (Philippians 2) My beloved, obedient as you have always been, not only when I am present but all the more now when I am absent, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.

 

Thursday (Philippians 3) But whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ. More than that, I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

 

Friday (Philippians 3) Join with others in being imitators of me, brothers and sisters, and observe those who thus conduct themselves according to the model you have in us. For many, as I have often told you and now tell you even in tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction.

 

Saturday (Philippians 4) I rejoice greatly in the Lord that now at last you revived your concern for me. You were, of course, concerned about me but lacked an opportunity.
Not that I say this because of need, for I have learned, in whatever situation I find myself, to be self-sufficient.

 

Gospel:  

Monday: (John 6) Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.

 

Tuesday: (Luke 14) One of those at table with Jesus said to him, “Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.” He replied to him, “A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many. When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’

 

Wednesday (Luke 14) Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

 

Thursday (Luke 15) Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’ 

 

Friday (Luke 16) Jesus said to his disciples, “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward.’

 

Saturday (Luke 16) “I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.

 

Saints of the Week

 

November 1: All Saints Day honors the countless faithful believers - living and dead - who have helped us along in our faith. Our liturgical calendar is filled with canonized saints, but we have many blesseds and minor saints who no longer appear on it. We have local saints across the world. We have many people who live Gospel values who we appreciate and imitate. We remember all of these people on this day.

 

November 2: All Souls Day is the commemoration of the faithful departed. November is known as All Souls Month. We remember those who died as we hasten towards the end of the liturgical year and the great feast of Christ the King. As a tradition, we have always remembered our dead as a way of keeping them alive to us and giving thanks to God for their lives. 

 

November 3: Rupert Mayer, S.J., priest (1876-1945), resisted the Nazi government and died while saying Mass of a stroke. In 1937, he was placed in protective custody and was eventually released when he agreed that he would no longer preach.

 

November 3: Martin de Porres, religious (1579-1639) was a Peruvian born of a Spanish knight and a Panamanian Indian woman. Because he was not pure blood, he lost many privileges in the ruling classes. He became a Dominican and served the community in many menial jobs. He was known for tending to the sick and poor and for maintaining a rigorous prayer life.

 

November 4: Charles Borromeo, bishop (1538-1584), was made Bishop of Milan at age 22. He was the nephew of Pope Pius IV. He was a leading Archbishop in the Catholic Reformation that followed the Council of Trent. During a plague epidemic, Borromeo visited the hardest hit areas so he could provide pastoral care to the sick.

 

November 5: All Saints and Blessed of the Society of Jesus are remembered by Jesuits on their particularized liturgical calendar. We remember not only the major saints on the calendar, but also those who are in the canonization process and hold the title of Blessed. We pray for all souls of deceased Jesuits in our province during the month by using our necrology (listing of the dead.)

 

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• November 1, 1956. The Society of Jesus was allowed in Norway. 
• November 2, 1661. The death of Daniel Seghers, a famous painter of insects and flowers. 
• November 3, 1614. Dutch pirates failed to capture the vessel in which the right arm of Francis Xavier was being brought to Rome. 
• November 4, 1768. On the feast of St Charles, patron of Charles III, King of Spain, the people of Madrid asked for the recall of the Jesuits who had been banished from Spain nineteen months earlier. Irritated by this demand, the king drove the Archbishop of Toledo and his Vicar General into exile as instigators of the movement. 
• November 5, 1660. The death of Alexander de Rhodes, one of the most effective Jesuit missionaries of all time. A native of France, he arrived in what is now Vietnam in 1625. 
• November 6, 1789. Fr. John Carroll of Maryland was appointed to be the first Bishop of Baltimore. 
• November 7, 1717. The death of Antonio Baldinucci, an itinerant preacher to the inhabitants of the Italian countryside near Rome.