Death is evil. Death rips apart our life-giving
relationships, hauls away our loved ones, and tears asunder our hearts. If there is not a hole in some part of your
heart, an aching emptiness for someone taken away by death, then you have not
loved nearly enough. And if you really
love as a Christian, then your heart will look like swiss cheese.
For Christianity death is not “just a
natural part of living.” It is, rather,
the Great Enemy. We oppose death
and all that leads to a culture of death.
We stand against the deliberate destruction of the unborn, the use of
war as an instrument of national policy, the death penalty, and all that
devalues the life of the sick, the poor, the mentally ill, the handicapped and
the elderly. We are for
life and against death.
Death, at least as we now experience
it, is a chastisement and a punishment.
As one of the Preface prayers for today’s Mass states: "For even
though by our own fault we perish, yet by your compassion and your grace, when
seized by death according to our sins, we are redeemed through Christ’s great
victory, and with him called back into life." Death is evil. But it is not victorious.
We all die, but we do not live in
despair, nor do we face life stoically with a stiff upper lip, but rather we
thrive in HOPE. St Paul today assures us
“Hope does not disappoint, because the
love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that
has been given to us.”
It is the Holy Spirit that unites us
to each other and forms us together into the Body of Christ. And that connection of the Holy Spirit is
stronger even than death. The real
spiritual connection we have with other Christians does not end with
death. It remains, and in a real way we
are still connected, still attached as member of one body in Christ.
So in Christ and through the Holy
Spirit we can still express to our departed loved ones our care, our concern,
our love. We pray for them in order to
encourage them in their continued growth, even beyond the grave, so that they
can be fully open and receptive to all the love God the Father wants to give
them, and not be hindered nor blocked by any resistance, by any evil, by any lingering
selfishness or sin.
That is what the purgation or
cleansing of purgatory is all about: it
is growing and stretching to be fully open and receptive to all the love God
wants to shower on us. It is not so much
about punishment as it is about growth.
That growing and stretching may be painful. The beautiful gaze of the incredible love of
Jesus may burn as we cling to self-centeredness, fear and sin. The dropping of our defenses and the opening
of ourselves in vulnerability to others may be really, really scary. But it is what we must do to become the truly
loving people that God has created us to be.
To be truly open to such transforming love will be a big change for many
of us.
But we are not in this alone. We are all members of one Body. We here support, encourage, root for our deceased
loved ones from the sidelines and assist them with our prayers. That is what we are doing here today.
In addition, we can unburden them by
offering our forgiveness for any ways they have hurt or sinned against us. Maybe a parent was too tired after working
all day to really be the mother or father we needed. Maybe they had been damaged by their
parents. Maybe there was no excuse other
than shear laziness. In any case we can
unburden them by offering our forgiveness and peace.
Likewise, we may need to request
their forgiveness. Perhaps we need for them
to accept our repentance and apology.
With the Holy Spirit’s guidance and assistance, they most surely will
forgive. Forgiveness is the road to the
fullness of life, and our deceased loved ones will certainly be eager to
respond.
This Feast of All Souls is about
community, the Communion we have in Jesus Christ. We are all members of One Body. We are all in this TOGETHER. Both in life and in death, we support,
encourage and assist one another by our prayers.
Our Faith is our encouragement and
hope. In our Gospel today Jesus gives us
this most encouraging and welcome assurance: “For this is the will of my Father, that
everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I
shall raise him up on the last day.”
AMEN.
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