2nd November – The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed
November can be a rather sombre and bleak month. The golden colours of autumn are quickly giving way to the barrenness of winter. As the month progresses, the days gradually get shorter, as light gives way to darkness. We lose the colours of nature and the life-giving quality of our light. It is a month of loss. It is fitting then that November is a time when we reflect upon more personal losses, the loss of significant people in our lives, people who loved us and whom we loved in return. The Commemoration of All Souls is a day when we remember them in a special way.
On this day, we feel a sense of communion with what we often call our ‘faithful departed’. However, as followers of the risen Lord, we believe that our loved ones have not just departed from us. They have also arrived to God, from whom they came. We also believe that our loved ones, in passing over to God, do not break their communion with us. A vital stream of life and love continues to flow between our deceased loved ones and ourselves. One of the ways we expressed our love for our loved ones during their earthly lives was by praying for them. Our loved ones who have died can still be touched by the love that finds its voice in prayer. Prayerful remembrance of our loved ones is one of the ways we continue to give expression to our loving communion with them. We believe that such prayer helps them, and it can also be of help to us. None of us will have had a perfect relationship even with those we have loved the most. When those who are close to us die, there is always some unfinished business. Praying for our deceased loved ones can help to heal whatever may need healing in our relationship with them. When we give expression to our love for them by praying for them, our communion with them can deepen, until it comes to fullness in the moment when we too pass over from this earthly life and are united with them in God’s love at the great banquet of eternal life portrayed in the first reading.
Although nothing is more painful than the loss of a loved one in death, our faith gives us this hope-filled vision in the face of death. In today’s second reading, Paul says that this ‘hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us’. Our hope is grounded in God’s love for us now, a very personal love that is poured into the hearts of each one of us through the Holy Spirit. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that ‘love never ends’ and that is supremely true of God’s love. God’s love, revealed in Jesus and poured into our hearts through the Spirit, continues to hold onto us when we pass through the door of death. What God’s love is already doing for us in this life through his Son and the Spirit is the assurance of what God’s love will do for us at the end of our earthly lives. As Paul says in our second reading, ‘Now that we have been reconciled (to God), surely we may count on being saved by the life of his Son’. All authentic human love will always give life to others. God’s love is uniquely life-giving for us, especially at the moment of our own physical death.
To-day’s gospel reading shows that Jesus was the fullest possible expression of God’s life-giving love. Jesus, his disciples and a great number of people approach the gate of the town of Nain in Galilee. Coming in the opposite direction is a very different group of people. A dead man is being carried out for burial, the only son of his widowed mother, and she is surrounded by a considerable number of the people of Nain. When these two very different groups meet, something extraordinary happens. Jesus was filled with compassion for the widowed mother, and without waiting to be asked to do anything, he restores physical life to the young man and gives him back to his mother. This mournful procession suddenly becomes a joyful procession, with everyone ‘filled with awe’ and praising God for visiting his people through the person of Jesus. It was Jesus’ compassion that brought life to the dead young man and brought joy to his mother. In the parable of the Good Samaritan it was the compassion of the Samaritan that brought life to the half-dead man on the roadside. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, it was the compassion of the father that brought life to his own half-dead son. At the end of our earthly lives it is the Lord’s compassionate love that will bring us through death into a new and glorious life, a life over which death has no power. In bringing new life to the young man, Jesus restored his relationship with his mother. We can be confident that in bringing us through death to new life, the Lord will restore our relationship with our loved ones who have died before us and will also enable us to maintain our relationship with our loved ones here on earth.