The Feast of All Saints | Fr. Aaron Damiani - Ephesians 1:15-23

A reading from the Apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

This is why, since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and

your love for all the Saints, I never stopped giving thanks for

you. As I remember you in my prayers,

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Glorious

Father, would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation

in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your

heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of

His calling, what is the wealth of His glorious inheritance in

the Saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His

power toward us who believe according to the mighty working

of His strength? He exercised this power in

Christ by raising Him from the dead, and seating Him at the

right hand of the heavens, far above every ruler and authority,

power and dominion, and every title, given not only on this

sage, but also in the One to come.

And he subjected everything under his feet, and appointed

him as head over everything for the church, which is his body,

the fullness of the One who fills all things in every way,

the word of the Lord. Would you pray with me?

Father, we do thank you for these precious words of Jesus

calling us blessed when we are going through difficulty and

trial, when we're hungering for justice and mercy, when we're

longing to be fed, when we have needs that are unmet, when we're

poor in spirit. We thank you, Lord, that there

is a blessing no matter what our circumstances are, because your

Holy Spirit is with us. Your plan is irrevocable.

Your love is complete. So we pray now, Lord, that as we

open the book of Ephesians, that the Holy Spirit would now open

our eyes to the incredible love and hope you have for the people

of God. And we pray that as we are

filled with your love, we would be richly and deeply connected

with all the Saints. In the name of the Father, Son,

and Holy Spirit, Amen. All right, please be seated and

you can turn in your Bibles or bulletins to Ephesians chapter

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

1. What a joy it is to be here on

this feast of All Saints and to be able to witness three people

receive the sacrament of baptism.

We're we're going to celebrate with Paul and Conrad and Violet.

We're going to receive new members.

We've got Nick, we've got Esther, we've got Peyton and

Emerson and Karen and Warren and Michaela.

And I just want you to know, friends, that as I've been

preparing this message and praying for you, you've been on

my mind and heart. And this, this message, this

homily is for you, for your spiritual formation.

I want to give you a way to pray because even as you are being

welcomed into the fellowship of all of the Saints, being

baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit wants a relationship with you

that's deepened. And there's a way for you to

approach each member of the Godhead in ways that are unique

and rich for your souls. And I want to talk about that

today from Ephesians one, because Paul gives us a

wonderful model for how to relate with the Father, the Son,

and the Holy Spirit. I want to invite all of the

Saints to listen in as as we talk about how to build a rich

prayer life with the Trinity. It's going to be transformative

for each one of us. And so if you would like a

relationship with God, if you're here today and you would like to

have a relationship with God, or maybe you're here and you would

like to deepen your relationship with God, this is for you as

well. This is an invitation for you.

We're going to do this catechism style, which is question and

answer. So let's start with the first

question. How do we relate with God the

Father? And the answer is with

Thanksgiving. With Thanksgiving, Christmas is

about two months away and it really is time for us to begin

the process of thinking through that right gift for the people

in our life. And I just a question for you,

for those of you who celebrate Christmas, has there ever been a

time at Christmas where you got a gift that was so like uniquely

perfect for you that like, it just filled your heart with

Thanksgiving? Not so much because even the

specific gift, but the intentional love and care and,

and just overflowing connection that the person had when they

were picking that gift out for you.

Sometimes I've not even known what to say besides thank you

when I've been receiving an incredible gift.

God the Father. One thing we just need to know

about Him is that He is an incredible gift giver.

He's thoughtful. He's intentional about the gifts

that He gives to each one of us and the gifts that He gives to

all the Saints. He thinks about it.

He sacrifices for it. And one of the best ways that we

can build a prayer life with God the Father is just to start with

Thanksgiving and to recognize His gifts, to name His gifts

aloud. Paul does this in verses 15 and

16 of Ephesians one when he says this, This is why, since I've

heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all

the Saints, I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you

in my prayers. We can ask, who is Paul

thanking? And he actually mentions in

verse 17 the glorious Father, the the Father of glory, the

glorious Father from whom all blessings flow.

Paul thanks the Father for two specific gifts.

And that is #1 the faith that the early Christians had in

Jesus and #2 the love that these early Christians had for one

another, faith and love. Now this might sound trite to

us, like faith and love. This sounds like the socks and

underwear of Christmas gifts where you have to say thank you.

But you know, it's a given and I was thinking about this leak

like why, why does Paul thank the Father for for faith and for

love? And I realized that in God's

plan, like faith, hope and love are the things that are going to

outlast all the gifts of this world.

And when you actually look at the value of faith in Jesus and

love for the Saints it it is amazing to think about all the

other backsplash benefits that flow from faith and love.

I recently read this week I read about City first.

City 1st is a church plant within Hardy Correctional

Institution in Illinois and faith in God and love for the

Saints was born there through this church plant and then that

led to many other gifts. Jeffrey is one of the inmates at

Hardy Correctional Institution and he wrote this to the leaders

who planted the church. In his letter he says when I

arrived here in November 2021, this was a camp for closed

management, inmates, lifers and the violence was everywhere.

With the city first teaching and your volunteers and prayers.

This camp has seen a revival where fights, death and

stabbings were rampant. Compassion, love and fellowship,

love for the Saints has prevailed.

I am sending you this letter to testify of the changing power of

the Lord. You, my city first family, have

taught me to forgive, understand and love.

What a difference the Lord has made in my life.

And can you hear the faith and the love and all of the benefits

that flow from faith and love You need to think about.

You know, I've been thanking God for the faith in Jesus and the

love for the Saints as evidenced by New Life Community Church in

our city. Right now with all of the

federal agents, all the ICE raids, New Life, and especially

Pastor Paco, you guys know Pastor Paco, he's right now he's

simply leading out with faith and love.

And it's giving me so much hope and so much goodness is flowing

from their faith and love. I'm giving thanks to to the

Father for this faith and this love.

Now many, many gifts follow faith and love like peace and

creativity and hope and purpose. And this is the Father's way.

You know, God the Father, he's very generous, He's very

abundant. And when we say thank you,

Father, for your gifts, one of the things that we're doing is

we're beginning to participate in his abundance.

We're moving toward his abundance, and then our

relationship with him deepens. This is really, really helpful

when we find ourselves in situations like Jeffrey.

You know, Jeffrey felt stuck in an environment of scarcity.

If you ever felt stuck in an environment of scarcity, where

you feel stuck and you feel like there's no hope.

And all of a sudden, Jeffrey felt the overflowing generosity

of the Father God in his circumstance, and his anxiety

and his hopelessness gave way to joy.

So Paul Conrad, Violet, there's going to be situations after

your baptism where you will feel desolation, worried, anxious,

weighed down. Maybe it'll be about friendships

or money. Maybe it'll be about work, maybe

it'll be about society, or it could be about safety or just

little things or big things. Our Father knows in those moment

what your needs are. He's going to provide for you,

and He loves you. And he's actually already given

of his precious son his most precious gift, to bring you to

him so that you never have to be without his generosity.

So in your suffering, I want to like tell you now that in that

moment you can lift up your heart in Eucharistic

Thanksgiving to the Father, and He will draw near to you and He

will overflow with faith and love for you.

This is especially helpful for all of us.

When we end our day, we can end our day with gratitude.

It's a wonderful way to end our day with God the Father.

We can begin our days with gratitude.

This, you know, it sets our entire trajectory of our day to

be in communion with God the Father, Thank him Thanksgiving.

That is the first way we can enter into communion with the

living God. One of the best gifts the Father

can give is his Holy Spirit. So second question, how do we

relate with God the Holy Spirit? The answer we ask him for

spiritual sight. We ask the Holy Spirit to give

us spiritual sight. Verse 17, Paul continues, I pray

that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father,

would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the

knowledge of him. And you'll notice that the word

Spirit in verse 17 is capitalized.

That's because it's about a, a person, the Holy Spirit, and

he's named here as the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the

knowledge of him, the knowledge of God.

Now, my son Sam knows a lot about sports.

He knows about all the players and all the plays.

He knows all the nuances of what's happening on the field.

And for that reason, I really love watching sports ball with

Sam because anything that happens, I just turn to him and

I'm like, what's going on there? What's happening on the

sidelines? And he'll just, he'll just

explain it to me. He knows me, but he also knows

the sport, and so he can translate it.

The Holy Spirit does something similar as we walk with God in

this life. The Holy Spirit knows the mind

of the Father and the mind of the Son really, really well.

He knows them perfectly. He loves them deeply.

But also the Holy Spirit knows our heart.

He, Paul says in Romans that the Holy Spirit searches our hearts,

He searches our souls, and he knows how to translate what's

happening in our life with God's purposes.

And we can simply turn to him and say, Holy Spirit, would you

help me understand? Would you give me wisdom?

Would you give me insight? Paul, Violet, Conrad, new

members, all the Saints. Here's a prayer that you can

utter to the Holy Spirit at any time.

You can ask him, would you help me see my life through God's

eyes? Spirit, would you help me see my

life through God's eyes and you can substitute anything in that

little chunk there of my life like my past.

Sometimes we it's hard to understand why God loud certain

things in our past. Can you help me understand my

present? Can you help me understand my

future? Can you help me understand this

trial? Can you help me understand this

blessing through God's eyes? And there are there.

There are times when all we can see is our pain and the Holy

Spirit can actually transform that moment and help us see

beyond the pain. What is God's plan?

What is God's purpose? What is God's goodness?

What is God's love? He can open our eyes to the hope

that we cannot see. Verse 18 tells us, I pray that

the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know

what is the hope of His calling is.

Anyone here needs to know hope, the hope of your calling, the

hope of Our Calling. That's word.

The hope of His calling on us is for all of the Saints.

The Holy Spirit can help us see that hope.

Is there anyone here who's ever felt unworthy?

Unworthy. Unworthy for your to stand

before God, unworthy to stand before others.

You feel like I'm not enough? If we ever feel unworthy, the

Holy Spirit can open our eyes to our worth in God's eyes.

The second-half of verse 18 says this.

What is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the

Saints? In other words, the Holy Spirit

can help us see that we, the Saints, are God's precious

inheritance. We are his inheritance.

We're his treasures. He holds us as like, like prizes

and precious sons and daughters. That's how he sees us.

And the Holy Spirit can help us see ourselves through God's

eyes. Is there anyone here who's ever

felt overwhelmed, like the challenges ahead of you and

before you are too much, it's too much.

If you ask the Holy Spirit, you can say, Holy Spirit, open my

eyes to God's incredible strength.

Verse 19. Here's what he'll help us see.

What is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us

who believe according to the mighty working of His strength?

There's four different Greek words for strength in verse 19,

and they're all about God. And Paul is praying that the

Ephesians and the early church and all of us would like our

imaginations would be baptized so that we could see how strong

God is. Now look, if it were easy to

hope, if it were easy for us to see that we're God's treasure,

his inheritance, if it were easy to see that God is powerfully

working on our behalf, maybe we would never pray to the Holy

Spirit. Maybe we wouldn't talk with him.

But as, as it stands like we have a lot going on right now

and we need the Holy Spirit and be encouraged like the Holy

Spirit is, is is right here ready to open our eyes, the eyes

of our heart to see how much God loves us, how powerful he is,

how much hope there is in our life and to give us wisdom and

revelation in the knowledge of God.

So next time, baptismal candidates, incoming members,

Saints, anyone with an earshot, the next time you face a

situation that feels hopeless, the next time you feel

overwhelmed, the next time you feel caught in a storm of shame

and anxiety, remember that the Holy Spirit stands ready to help

you see your situation through God's eyes, which will bring

hope and which will bring peace, and which will bring an

incredible sense of God clothing you and His love.

How do we relate with God the Son, Jesus Christ?

Final, final Q&A. How do we relate with Jesus,

God's precious Son? The answer is this.

We follow him. We follow him from weakness to

fullness. We followed Jesus from weakness

to fullness. Notice how Paul describes

Christ's position in verse 20. Verse 20.

Exercise this power in Christ by raising him from the dead, the

dead. You can't get more weak than

dead, you know. You can't make anything happen

for yourself. You can't talk, you can't

breathe. You would notice Christ is, you

know, referred to as dead in verse 20, but look at verses

verse 23. He's called the one who fills

all things in every way. Is that astounding?

Christ is filling all things in every way by the time you get to

verse 23 and and that the beautiful thing is that he's not

just strong for his own sake, He's filling the church.

He's filling all things. He's reigning over every power

and authority in heaven or on earth, not just for his own

benefit. But actually verse 22 talks

about how it's for our benefit for the sake of the church.

Christ did not go from strength to strength, which is how I like

to go. I like to go from compound

interest to compound interest in life.

And don't we all, you know, from success to success, nothing

succeeds like success, am I right?

I don't know. I wouldn't know.

But but that's the promise, isn't it?

That's the lie that you, you, you just keep winning and that

winning begets winning. And The thing is, I think all of

us know like nothing fails, like false success.

You know, Jesus went from weakness to strength.

He went from weakness to fullness.

This is his way where he defeated sin, He defeated death,

He defeated the devil. And this is the way that he

leads us. He leads the Saints.

Violet Conrad. Paul, he's leading you in his

way of weakness to fullness. In your baptism today you'll be

united with him. And from this day forward he's

got he's got a cloak for you to wear.

Remember the hobbits, they got a cloak for their journey.

You're going to get a cloak for your journey.

It's the robes of righteousness. It's the close of Jesus and He's

going to lead you through weakness, through valleys and

into fullness, into heights that are unimaginable.

And He's got a cross for you to carry.

He says anyone who wants to come after me needs to pick up their

cross and follow me. The cross isn't to hurt you, by

the way. It's it's to lead you into

glory. One day you'll be seated with

Him in heaven. You'll be ruling and reigning.

In the meantime, He's He's simply asking you to just step

by step, follow Him in your weakness.

Some days in this journey are going to feel like the

beatitudes that Father Samuel read.

You're going to find yourself weeping, torn spirits,

misunderstood. It could be like you.

Maybe your best friend moves away and you feel lonely and

sad. Or maybe you don't make the team

for the sport that you love. Or maybe the medical tests come

back with a scary diagnosis and you're not going to know what to

do on those days. Remember that weakness was

Christ's path too, and He's with you, and you can always, always

OfferUp your weakness to Him. Now.

Other days, friends, you're going to find yourself rejoicing

and seeing, seeing breakthrough in your life and seeing growth

in your life and it will be from strength to strength and they'll

be healing and they'll be open doors and you'll see how God's

using you and your spiritual gifts and your call to bless

other people on those days. Remember that was also Christ's

path. OfferUp your fullness to him.

And in all of this, friends, baptism candidates, incoming

members, people of God, anyone with an earshot, stay as close

to Jesus as you can in his path from death to resurrection, from

weakness to fullness, and do so with confidence that the same

power that raised Christ from the dead will raise you also and

will raise all the Saints. Here's one way that as a church,

we're following Jesus in a time of weakness.

Our city really is in pain and turmoil right now from the ice

raids taking place in our communities.

And just the basic fact is that we're seeing vulnerable people

get harmed and we're noticing that kids don't go trick or

treating and sometimes don't go to school and families are

hiding because they don't want to get tear gassed.

They don't want to get arrested. They don't want to get taken

away. And we're just seeing vulnerable

people get harmed and we're crying out to God to bring

justice and healing to our city. And yet we can't pull some lever

and make it all stop. You know, God hasn't given us

that power right now, but what has he given us?

He's given us his way of death and resurrection right now.

And so even as we pray for this, this time of pain to come to an

end, we're we're, we're like Jesus.

Where can we pray? Where can we love?

Where can we bring healing? And so we're collecting coats

for migrants and we're showing up to new life centers where

they're like putting food together for families and

hiding. And on lessons and Carols, when

we come together in lessons of care, we're going to raise money

for new life centers so that they can give groceries and

clothing and medical care and wrap around care for families on

the South and West sides right now are just in terror from

what's happening. And we're not doing that to be

like, Yep, we're the good guys, you're the bad guys, we're the

good guys. That's not the story of grace.

That's not the story of Jesus. The story of Jesus is

sacrificial love to the glory of God, to the one who gave us all

things from whom all blessings flow.

We're going to let that flow through us in a loving,

sacrificial way. That's the story that we're

living. And we're asking God to make all

of this right, to make all this new.

And we're we're waiting on the day of the Lord where he will do

that. It might look weak, might feel

weak, but in God's wisdom, that is the faith, that is the love,

that is the strength that will endure.

So baptism candidates, members being received and all within

earshot, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit welcome you into

their fellowship. Welcome all the Saints into the

fellowship, the invitations there.

And the there's love for you, there's delight for you, there's

healing and forgiveness for you. And so I want to ask all of us,

let's this morning lift up our hearts in faith and thanks.

Let's open our hearts up to the Holy Spirit's wisdom, and let's

follow Jesus into his unshakable Kingdom.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.