Pope Francis reflects on All Saints

South Rose Window Chartres Cathedral

Pope Francis reflected on meaning of the feast of All Saints during the Angelus with pilgrims in St Peter's Square on Wednesday.

The Holy Father said: "Saints are not perfect models, but people marked by God. We can compare them to church stained-glass windows, which bring light into different shades of colour... Saints are our brothers and sisters who have received the light of God in their hearts and have transmitted it to the world, each according to their own 'tonality'. "This is the purpose of life ... to pass on the light of God."

Referring to the day's Gospel reading, the Pope said: "Jesus speaks to his own, to all of us, saying "Blessed."

"Whoever is with Jesus is blessed, he is happy," noted the Pope, adding that "happiness is not in having something or becoming someone ... no, the real happiness is to be with the Lord and to live for love, he said."

The Pope said: "the ingredients for a happy life are called the beatitudes." They do not require tremendous gestures, he said, "they are not for supermen, but for those who live through daily trials and struggles. They are for us."

Returning to the Saints, the Holy Father described how "they too have breathed in all the air polluted by the evil that is in the world, but on the journey they never lose sight of the path of Jesus, that is indicated in the beatitudes, which, he said, are like the map of Christian life."

The Pope went on to say that the feast of All Saints is a celebration of all those who have "reached the goal indicated by this map: not only the saints of the calendar, but so many brothers and sisters "next door" that we may have met and known."

This day, Pope Francis said, "is a family celebration of many simple and hidden people who actually help God to push the world forward."