Lord My Chef Sunday Recipe for Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Solemnity of All Saints, 01 November 2026
Revelation7:2-4, 9-14 ><}}}}*> 1 John 3:1-3 ><}}}}*> Matthew 5:1-12
The way we Filipinos say goodbyes illustrates vividly – with a dash of some humor – the theology of our celebrations of All Saints Day and All Souls Day we collectively call as Undas.
When we are in a party or any gathering, we never say we are leaving like alis na ako that sounds rude, or layas na ako that is tinged with anger while diyan na kayo could mean burning of one’s bridges, a sort of total separation.
Normally, we say goodbyes either by saying tutuloy na po ako or mauna na po ako. The po is optional but both are the most kind and accepted way of telling everuyone we are leaving. our hosts we are leaving. Tutuloy na ako literally in English is “I’m coming in”when you are actually going out to leave while mauna na po ako means I’m going first or will go ahead of everybody whereas no one is following you especially the host.
But here are the twists in these Filipino goodbyes: both indicate our being Christians, of our deeply ingrained religiosity no matter how hard some would deny. Whenever we say tutuloy na ako, mauna na ako, we unconsciously or subconsciously express our hunger and thirst for heaven, for eternal life.
To say tutuloy na ako is to express that basic truth we all die with one final destination which is heaven in eternal life.
To say mauuna na ako is an affirmation of our other famous maxim about death, una-una lang yan, that nobody knows who’s going to die among us next.
Every time we bid goodbye to anyone, we express this holy desires to be in heaven, to be with God, to be like all the Saints we celebrate on this first day of November.
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied” (Matthew 5:1-2, 6).
In this time of faith in a mass-mediated culture that thrives in promoting pleasures and merry-making alongside with overflowing food and drinks while more others are starving and dying in hunger and still more are without potable water to drink, we find the fourth beatitude a rarity.
Notice how bacchanalian our generation has become with all the food apps and restaurants offering a plethora of food and drinks so glorified in social media called “food porn”, a prostitution of food and drinks. How sad so many people has become so insensitive in posting all their food in social media without any deference for the poor who could barely make ends meet for a decent meal thrice daily. See how so few among us Catholics really fast or go on abstinence every Ash Wednesday and Good Friday with all of our excuses and alibis.
Very sad.
Hence, Jesus called “blessed” those who hunger and thirst for righteousness because it is an affirmation of our faith in him who told the devil in the wilderness that “man does not live by bread alone but by every that comes forth from the mouth of God” (Mt.2:4). To hunger and thirst for righteousness is to value more the soul than the body. It is an appetite for the sacred and for things of deeper value and importance than those that are fleeting and superficial like food and drinks and other pleasures including those that bloat our egos.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness because it is a desire to be holy first of all, a desire for God himself, a desire for heaven. Righteousness for the Jews is holiness which is the observance of God’s Laws and Commandments. But, problem with this frame of mind as we have seen since the other Sunday is the tendency to be legalistic, to see more the Laws than the person that ultimately, fails to see God in one another.
Holiness is being filled with God like the souls already in heaven called Saints. They are holy because they have been purified of their sins and therefore filled with God as John tells us in his vision of heaven of great multitudes wearing white robes washed in the Blood of the Lamb.
But for us still on earth, still battling with sin and evil, holiness is being filled with God but not sinless. And because we are filled with God, we strive always to work alongside with Christ, bearing all the pains and sufferings he bore first for us for the sake of righteousness, of justice and peace. In this world when conformity to whatever “everyone is doing” is the rule of the game like corruption, dishonesty, and infidelity, being hungry and thirsty with the poor and suffering is our strongest signs of protest and resistance against the prevailing evils of our time. Being hungry and thirsty for righteousness is also being hungry and thirsty for the Kingdom of God because that is a sharing in Christ’s Passion and Death leading to his glorious Resurrection.
The most difficult daily struggle we all contend with is our hunger and thirst, our most basic instincts for the most basic needs of food and water in order to live; without food and water, we grow weak and die. However, hunger and thirst tend us to overindulge with food and drinks because these readily give us pleasures, making us forget the more essential things in life.
That is why the need for some forms of sacrifices like abstinence and fasting not only with food and drinks but anything that gives us pleasure and comfort so that we learn to desire for higher things like God, holiness and virtues.
The fourth beatitude is most timely in a world that has become so consumerist where only matter matters with everything reduced to pera pera lang with God slowly being deleted from daily life scenes. See how our world has become like showbiz with all the glitz and glamor with everything for show or palabas that despite the abundance we now enjoy not only in food and drinks but almost everything, the more we have become empty and alienated within.
Blessed are you if you hunger and thirst for righteousness because it is a grace reminding you of that fact many forget that the world and everything here passes. Being hungry and thirsty for righteousness is having God in your heart, of experiencing his love, of working to love others so that they too may experience God because they have been so hungry and thirsty for love and kindness, care and concern from others.
What do you hunger and thirst for these days?
How sad that with all these technologies we now have meant to bring us closer with one another have actually brought us apart. Worst of all, the very technologies meant to work for us now enslave us, becoming not only the gods of many but masters too. Blessed are you in your hunger and thirst for God because he alone in Christ Jesus can truly satisfy us here and hereafter. Dwell in the love of God in Jesus Christ John tells us in the second reading like the saints who have gone ahead of us, resisting all evils and temptations to sin for only the Lord satisfies us. Amen. A blessed All Saints’ Day to you!
