Patristic Wisdom: Looking to All Saints' Sunday

Alleluia!
Sing to the Lord a new song,
His praise in the assembly of His holy ones.
Let Israel be glad in Him who made him,
And let the children of Zion greatly rejoice in their King.
Let them praise His name with dance;
With tambourine and harp let them sing to Him;
For the Lord is pleased with His people,
And He shall exalt the gentle with salvation.
The holy ones shall boast in glory,
And they shall greatly rejoice on their beds;
The high praise of God shall be in their mouth
And a two-edged sword in their hand,
To deal retribution to the nations,
Reproving among the peoples,
To shackle their kings with chains
And their nobles with fetters of iron,
To fulfill among them the written judgment:
This glory have all His holy ones. (Psalm 149)

In the previous verse he said that we must rejoice in the Lord Christ, and now he says that the Lord’s name is to be praised in chorus. This is the chorus which by then suffers no dispersal or weariness or scandal, but is gathered on the worth of its merits, and ever abides in the most loving unity. Another psalm explains the nature and scope of this chorus in the words: From the rising of the sun unto the going down, praise the name of the Lord. The chorus is that gathered from the world’s beginning from the aggregate of nations; it can be fully mustered only in the homeland to come. Next comes: Let them sing to him with the timbrel and the psaltery. We have stated that the timbrel and psaltery are praiseworthy acts performed in this world as services to God, which are no longer observed in that homeland, but they will be in evidence there when there is rejoicing as we glory in them. What saddens us here delights us there; what afflicts us here cheers us there. As we read in Scripture, Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice’s sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So all these, whether timbrel or psaltery, hymn the Lord in the world to come, for they are known to be practiced or endured in this life for His name.

Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms 3