To be read at all Masses on the Solemnity of All Saints 1st/2nd November 2025

My dear brothers and sisters,

The Solemnity of All Saints provides the ultimate perspective for our lives. This celebration urges us to strive to be with those whom the Gospel declares forever “blessed”, so we may at last “rejoice and be glad” that “our reward is great in heaven”. This is our goal by God’s grace, his free and undeserved help, to finally be with those “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb”.

The saints who have attained this goal offer us their encouragement and the help of their prayers. Among them are those men and women who have been recognised through the centuries as “doctors”, that is “teachers” who help us with the guidance of their writing and teaching along the path of our Christian lives. Today, Pope Leo has declared our own Saint John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church.

John Henry Newman is no stranger to this Shrewsbury Diocese, spending most of his life in Birmingham and Oxford. In times when people often despair of finding objective truth, preferring to speak of “your truth” and “my truth” because they no longer believe truth can be found, Cardinal Newman has been raised up as a guide.

The journey he made into the full communion with the Catholic Church will be an encouragement for many making this same journey. Saint Paul VI said of his journey, that “guided solely by love of the truth and fidelity to Christ, (he) traced an itinerary, the most toilsome, the most conclusive, that human thought ever travelled during the last century, indeed one might say during the modern era, to arrive at the fullness of wisdom and peace”.

At the heart of the Catholic Church, Newman found what he called “a Treasure unutterable”, the Mystery of the Eucharist containing the Church’s entire spiritual wealth: Christ Himself. As Newman reflected, “He is not past, He is present now. And though He is not seen, He is here”.

May we learn from Saint John Henry Newman to see our own lives in the light of the Eucharist. United with you in this prayer,

+ Mark, Bishop of Shrewsbury