At the doors of both our churches, you will find envelopes for All Souls Day, which is November 2. All Saints Day, November 1, is a Holy Day of Obligation, All Souls is the day when we remember all our dead. During the month of November, all the envelopes for All Souls are collected, and placed on the two altars, and special prayers are said for all our beloved dead. You can put your envelope in the basket on the weekend. Grief is hard, and is a process, and points us toward our faith in the resurrection. Jesus’ death and resurrection are His promise to us that death does not have the final word, that death is overcome, and we are all created for this life eternal by our loving God.
What is striking in the gospels, and all of scripture, is the enduring love God has for each one of us. Our command, in a nutshell, is to love the Lord with all our heart, our mind, and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. As well as we might learn to love, we often fall short. God’s love never falls short, and God’s love is powerful. So powerful, it is not incorrect to say that God’s love is stronger than death. This is why we are a pro-life church because God’s love leads us to life.
We see this clearly each week when we worship together, and Jesus offers himself again and again for us. He does so because He loves us, not because any of us deserve His sacrifice. This should lead us to a posture of gratitude, and accompanying actions that express our gratitude. We need to reach out to those who are poor, those who are sick and suffering, those on the margins of society. Our prayer should include all those on the margins, and all those in desperate circumstances, like in parts of the middle east and Ukraine. When our prayer points us toward the sacrifice of our Savior, then we are better able to model the sacrifice we are each called to emulate.
As we are in October, a month dedicated to the Rosary, may our rosaries and all our prayers help us to honor our beloved dead, lead us to do more for those in need, and bring each of us to a greater appreciation of all God had done for us. God bless you all.