Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.

You know when it comes to all saints day, it's one of the great celebrations, one of

the great feasts that the church gives us.

One of the things that I think sometimes we don't get is like what difference do the

saints make in our lives and where do we even get this idea that there's this thing

called we call like we call the communion of saints.

Well in the letter to the Hebrews chapter 11 it talks all about these great heroes of faith.

It talks with Abraham, it talks about Moses and it talks about Samson and David and all

these kind of people about how amazing they are and then we get chapter 12 and the author

writes this he says, therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,

like talking about this like okay therefore all these people they're surrounding us.

Since therefore we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay

aside every weight, every sin which clings to us so closely and let us run with perseverance

the race that is set before us.

Now there's something about that that just really fires me up when it comes to thinking

about the race, thinking about like here the saints have gone before us and so let us

let us also set aside everything that holds us back, everything that holds us, it's

flows us down.

It reminds me of this story, a number of years ago I was my whole family, we used to love

doing these what they call Iron Man trathlons.

So a trathlons is obviously swimming biking and running.

My family would do these Iron Man trathlons which is an Iron Man is a race that is 2.4 miles

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