02 November, 2019. All Souls’ Day
Feast of All the Faithful Departed
From the prophet Isaiah 25:6-9
A vision of hope for the future, when God will restore his people to happiness
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day, ‘Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.’
Responsorial: Psalm 26: 1, 4, 13-14
R.: The Lord is my light and my salvation
The Lord is my light and my help;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
before whom shall I shrink? (R./)
There is one thing I ask of the Lord,
for this I long,
to live in the house of the Lord,
all the days of my life,
to savour the sweetness of the Lord,
to behold his temple. (R./)
O Lord, hear my voice when I call;
have mercy and answer.
It is your face, O Lord, that I seek;
hide not your face. (R./)
I am sure I shall see the Lord’s goodness
in the land of the living.
Hope in him, hold firm and take heart.
Hope in the Lord! (R./)
From the Gospel according to Mark (15:33-39, 16:1-6)
When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah.” And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”
When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day, the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.
Reflection: Loved into eternity
The Halloween combinatrion of All Saints Day and All Souls Day alongside each other, combines the certainty of death and our hope for life after death. “See what love the Father has bestowed on us.” These days are a sober reminder that as living, material organisms, our bodies will one day give out. Somewhere, sometime, sooner or later, we will come face to face with our personal death. As the Old Testament puts it, we shall go to join our ancestors.
And then what? Is it all over for one’s personal existence? Is it to be extinction, silence, darkness? Will there be no more love, no more joy, no more relationships?
Jesus points us to a more hopeful future. He passed through the doors of suffering and a cruel death to come back and say there is light and love and joy, a life beyond what we can imagine. He offers hope for those who find it possible to trust in him. What does this feast ask of us? Be grateful for what you have. See what love the Father has bestowed on us!
Why do we actually pray for the people who have gone before us? It’s a widespreac human tradition, and for Christians it’s based on the hope taught by Jesus himself. He once said: “All that the Father gives me will come to me; and whoever comes to me I will not cast out.” Today our Church is praying for all the deceased, for all the people we knew, but also for all the millions of others who have passed on from this life.
Any one of us can have known only a tiny fraction of the people who have died even in our own time, let alone since mankind began. But our creator-God knows them all, and calls each one by name. He knows who and what we are at throughout our lives. So we turn to God with the simplicity of a child who trusts the Father with our lives! “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day.”
Prayerful remembering
Today we remember many whom we have known and loved — family members and good friends and the wider circle of everyone we have met in life, who have passed on. Indeed, the whole month of November is specially devoted to remembering our dead. This is a prayerful remembering, keeping their memory in our hearts, while we seek God’s presence. Praying for our loved ones expresses our ongoing communion with them.
We commit all who are gone ahead of us to God, who also accompanies us on our journey of life. Our communion in the church keeps us in fellowship with all who have died. Praying for them, we ask that they may have life, as the Lord brought the widow’s son to life. We are also grateful to them, thanking God for the gift of their lives and all the ways we were blessed through them. Today, we entrust them all to God. As “God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us,” we pray that they now experience God’s love to the full.