Who wants to think about death – their own or that of others? The temptation is to pass over talk of death in favor of new life. Yet if our faith teaches us anything, it is that the negative space of death has the ability, like negative space in art, to reveal the beauty of the bigger picture.
All Souls’ Day, coupled with All Saints’ Day, invites us right into that space. It invites us to bridge the gap between life and death. It asks us to put our faith on full display. Faith in the resurrection. Faith that in the dying and the rising of the everyday we grow closer to Christ. Faith that no matter who we lose in this life to death, they are never lost to God.
The space that our dearly departed occupy in our hearts and our prayer is a sign of that. We hold on to their love because it has shown us God’s love; we carry their memory because those memories – and indeed the faithful departed themselves by their intercession – carry us to God.
The Book of Wisdom tells us: those who have died are in peace. This peace is what we all long for, in this life and the next. It is the peace that Jesus offers and we are given each time we gather in this space, at this Eucharistic table.
As Jesus says to the crowds, “this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me.” By virtue of our baptism, we are given to Christ. Our entire lives are the active process of making a return to God – giving back, in love, the life that has been given to us, remembering who God made us to be (and continues to call us to be.)
This memory is reflected in the loved ones we have lost, those people who have loved us into being. They are the saints who have dwelt among us. You know them, I know you do, and I hope that you pray to them and for them, especially today.
They have been united with Christ through a death like his.
As for us, we may not be on our deathbeds but still we grow in union with Christ by dying and rising in the everyday. This dying is not final, but incremental. It outlines the bigger picture. We die to self when we choose to rise in love. We are proved and purified like gold in the fire when we stay present to the injustices in the world and to the people who we find it tiresome, inconvenient, or even downright frustrating to love. We become more like the saints we’re called to be when we put God’s will before our own – pausing to pray, to ask forgiveness, or to simply savor the beauty of God’s creation.
Sr. Colleen will offer a reflection for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls) at the 12:00pm Mass at St. John this Sunday, November 2. An excerpt appears above and a recording of the reflection will be available on the website early next week.