November 1-2, 2008
All Saints – Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls)
Wisdom 3:1-9 Romans 14:7-12 John 14:1-6
Time stands still. We find it hard to believe the words we have just heard. There has been an accident…..there has been a heart attack….there has been a stroke…..age has finally caught up…..they went peacefully….. While the world might contain 6 billion human beings, our individual worlds are inhabited by a precious few cherished family and friends. These are the ones with whom we have lived our lives, from whom we have received life and love. When we hear of their death, either expected or unexpected, time stands still, our world becomes a little smaller. Each person responds to grief individually: some with loud wails, some with tearful walks on the beach or a private departure to a bedroom and darkness. Our minds review the remembered vignettes of a shared life with the newly departed: their smile, their laugh, their interaction (positive or negative) with us, the last event we shared with them. A void has appeared in our neat and tidy life. How will we manage, how will we go forward? Yet, we do. We mourn, we experience the emptiness of death…and then we also begin to recall the messages of Easter, the empty tomb, the promise of fresh life beyond the constraints of this earthly existence. Somewhere within our souls we feel the gentle touch of God awakening us to his presence…even in death….and where there is God, there can be no despair. Our loved ones have ‘run the course’ of life, their earthly body can go no further… now they dwell with God. While we miss them, while we are tempted to think that we can provide them with a better life…our deeper awareness is that they are okay, they are with God. On this weekend of remembering our Saints and Souls…we touch upon a great mystery, the life we cannot see or understand. We know each other by our facial expressions, by the turn of our smile, our luminous eyes or the sound of our voices….but are we nothing but external physical sensations? Might not our smile and twinkling eyes come from something deep within our essence….the essence which knows eternity in a new abode with God? All Saints and All Souls are somber days of great emotion…a tender sadness that our loved ones are no longer physically present with us….but a startling awareness that their love for us continues, that they still live, albeit in a transformed manner…but all that they were for each of us continues unabated. At some future date, time will stand still for those who hear of our final departures….and then they too will comfort themselves with this same truth…..there is no end to the life that God calls into existence…constant change and transformation…but no end. This weekend we celebrate life….of those around us in the here and now…and those who have been transformed and live anew in dwelling places prepared by Jesus.
Thank you for sharing this most special weekend with our Corpus Christi Catholic-Christian Community. Should you desire to enroll your own loved ones in the special series of commemorative Masses, All Souls Envelopes are available on the Concierge Shelves. With Election Day this Tuesday…make sure you know where your polling place is located…and get out and vote your individual conscience. These next few weeks will pass with startling speed and we will soon find ourselves at Thanksgiving…a reminder of our special tradition of a FREE Parish Thanksgiving Dinner on Monday, November 24th…sign up sheets for those who will adopt and cook a turkey, along with pot-luck donations of all the other fixings will be out starting next weekend. Please take a Bulletin home with you, lots of holiday opportunities coming up. As you remember your loved ones, as you help vote a fresh course for our country…remember, you are loved….(and may God bless the United States of America on November 4th!) FKB
