There is a calendar hidden inside the Church's year. It is not the ordinary kind that hangs on a wall, with the days in neat rows. It is a calendar of names. Almost every day of the year has a saint's name written on it, the way a birthday does: the fourth of October belongs to Saint Francis of Assisi, the thirteenth of June to Saint Anthony, the twelfth of October to Our Lady of Aparecida.

But something curious happened to that calendar. However many days the year held, they were never enough. The saints kept growing more numerous than the days.

More Saints than Days

Think about it. A year has three hundred and sixty-five days, and in some years three hundred and sixty-six. Yet the people who truly loved God, across all the centuries, in every corner of the world, are far more than that. They are more than a thousand, more than a million. No one has ever managed to count them.

Most of them never got a feast day at all. There is no statue of them anywhere, no street with their name, no book telling their story. They were ordinary people, with ordinary hands, who did one thing that was not ordinary at all: they spent their lives loving, right to the end, with nobody watching.

So the Church had a beautiful idea. If there is no room for a day for every saint, then let there be one day, one enormous day, for all of them at once.

The First of November

More than twelve hundred years ago, in Rome, a pope named Gregory had a chapel prepared inside the great church of Saint Peter and dedicated it to all the saints, on a first of November. Some time later another pope, also named Gregory, asked the whole Church to keep that date. And so it stayed, century after century, until it reached the calendar hanging in your house.

The first of November is All Saints' Day. It is the feast of the saints you know by name and, above all, the feast of the saints whose names nobody ever learned.

The Crowd Too Great to Count

In the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, a man named John tells about a vision he was given. He saw heaven standing open, and before the throne of God a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation and tribe and people and language. They were all dressed in white, with green branches in their hands, and they were singing together.

No one could count them. Not even John, who was looking straight at them.

That is the crowd the Church celebrates on the first of November. People of every color and every language, most of them with names that were lost along the way. God, though, has not lost a single one.

The Saints Close By

You may have met a few of them already without knowing it.

A grandmother who prayed quietly every night with her rosary in her hand and never mentioned it to anyone. A neighbor who crossed the street with a plate of hot food when someone fell ill. A teacher who was patient, year after year, with the hardest child in the class. A man who forgave something enormous and never asked for anything in return.

None of them was in the newspaper. None of them has a statue in a church, or a candle burning under a picture. But God was watching the whole time, and God saw all of it.

The Day After

On the second of November something different happens, and it is worth not mixing the two up. That is All Souls' Day, when we pray for everyone who has died, asking God to welcome them kindly. Many families visit the cemetery, bring flowers, and pray for grandparents and friends who have gone ahead.

They are neighboring days, pressed up against each other, and each has its own way of being. The first is the gladness of those who have already arrived. The second is the prayer for those we place in God's hands. One is a party, the other is a hug.

And You Too

The loveliest thing about All Saints' Day is that this feast has not finished happening yet. The crowd is still growing, slowly, every day. There is always room for one more.

And nobody has to do anything enormous to join it. What you can already do today is enough: share your snack, tell the truth when a lie would be easier, say sorry, help before anyone asks, pray before you fall asleep. That is exactly how almost all of those millions began, with small things done again and again.