All Souls
IN GOD’S HANDS
José Antonio Pagola.
We men and woman of today don’t know what to do with death. Sometimes the only thing that
occurs to us is to ignore it and don’t talk about it. Forget that sad event as soon as possible, fulfill
the necessary religious or civil formalities, and then get back once again to our daily life.
But sooner or later, death comes knocking at our doorsteps, taking from us our dearest loved ones.
How to react when death takes our mother from us forever? What attitude do we adopt when our
loved spouse tells us the last goodbye? What to do in the face of the emptiness that the death of so
many friends has left in our life?
Death is a door that comes upon each person alone. Once that door is closed, the loved one is
hidden from us forever. We don’t know what has become of him. That person so dear and so close
is lost to us now in the unfathomable mystery of God. How to relate to her?
We who follow Jesus don’t limit ourselves to passively attend to the fact of death. Trusting in the
Risen Christ, we accompany the loved one with love and with our prayer as they go forward in that
mysterious encounter with God. In the Christian liturgy for the dead there isn’t desolation, rebellion
or hopelessness. In its center there is only a prayer of trust: “Into your hands, O Good Father, we
commend the life of our loved one.”
What meaning today can we give to those funerals in which are united many people of different
ideas about the mystery of death? What can we do together – believers, weekend believers,
Christmas and Easter believers, non-believers?
Throughout the years, we have changed a lot within. We’ve become more critical, but also more
fragile and vulnerable; we are more skeptical, but also more insecure. It’s not easy for us to believe,
but it’s difficult not to. We live full of doubts and uncertainties, but we don’t know how to find
hope.
Sometimes I try to invite people who come to a funeral to do something that everyone can do, each
one from his or her mustard seed of faith. From within your heart, tell your loved one some words
that express our love for him or her and our humble prayer to God:
“We still love you, but now we don’t know how to touch you or what to do for you. Our faith is
weak and we don’t know how to pray. But we entrust you to God’s love, we leave you in God’s
hands. God’s love is for you today a safer place than anything we ourselves could offer you. Enjoy
the fullness of life. God loves you as we didn’t know how to love you. One day we’ll see you again.
Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle A - Matthew 23:1-12
The boss was in his new office. An employee walked in. The boss picked up the phone and started
an imaginary conversation flattering himself. He signaled the worker he'd be with him shortly. The
employee said, "Take your time, boss. I'm here to hook up your phone." "A proud heart," wrote Ben
Franklin, "is like a crooked fence.
All the paint in the world won't straighten it." The problem of pride was as bothersome to the early
Church as it is to ours. Mark and Luke touch upon pride as well as today's Matthew. No century
corners the market on pride. Can anyone even remotely imagine a proud Christ? Yet, He had much
to be proud about. What disciple does Jesus seek?
A monk was sent to an abbey as abbot. He arrived at the abbey. From his dress, the monks judged
him inferior. They sent him to their kitchen. Their new abbot spent weeks scouring pots and
shelling beans. The bishop arrived. When he could not find the abbot, he went on a search. He
found him in the kitchen preparing supper. He presented him to the monks in chapel. They had
received a lifetime lesson in humility. The abbot is the man whom the Teacher wants. (William
Barclay)
The proud, we are told, pray on Sunday and PREY on those about them on Monday. Rather, pray
with God on Sunday and walk with Him on Monday. The abbot reminds us when we think we are
humble, we are not. Many of us even have a nasty habit of being proud of our humility. We become
legends in our minds. We go to church to find out what our neighbors should do to lead better lives.
He that is proud, said Shakespeare, eats himself up. Pride, says the Bible, goeth before the fall. In
Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland," Alice found a mushroom. When she ate one side of the
mushroom, she found herself getting smaller. When she ate the other side, she got taller. Of the two
situations, Alice decided smaller was better. For, as she was reduced in size, all things and people
about her looked more wonderful. Less, she discovered, can be more. Small can be beautiful.
Walt Whitman ate the correct side of the mushroom, for he wrote, "As for me, I know nothing else
but miracles." We are forever circling that same mushroom. If we allow ourselves the portion that
makes us larger, everything else about us will lack wonder. We will become puffed up with our
worth. Critics will put us down as studies in pomposity. We will develop in ourselves the very
faults which we detest in others. The proud, says the savant, detest pride in others.
A man was awarded a medal for his humility. Shortly he was stripped of it. He had begun to wear it
proudly. Many of us have much in common with him. Two ambassadors walked on Paris' Champs
Elysees. They were grieved. Though the Parisians had greeted them warmly, none had addressed
them with their title, "Your Excellency." If proud, one becomes the character whom Peter Ustinov
addresses in his play as "Your Altitude." We become like those who ask, "What will the world do
without me when I'm gone?" Only those who permit themselves to grow smaller and smaller will be
able to see "the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower." Not only will they bring
themselves joy but also they will share that joy with others. They will be God's ambassadors. They
will give pleasure to the Christ.
They will become the children which the Nazarene asked us to be. They will rush into the Kingdom
laughing and singing "When the Saints Come Marching In." A US senator attends a weekly prayer
group. At its end, while other participants rush to their jobs, the senator stays to stack chairs and
clean up. And he is the highest ranking person there. Looking for a role model? But do not put off
this thousand mile journey! Lewis Carroll must have had each of us in mind when he wrote in his
other classic "Through the Looking-Glass": "It takes all the running you can do to stay in one place.
If you want to get anywhere, you have to run twice as fast." A US president was working an old age
home for votes while running for a second term. He said to an old man, "Do you know me?" The
fellow said, "No, but if you ask the nurse, she'll tell you." No one, history tells us, has ever choked
to death from swallowing his own pride. Can those, who really know themselves, afford to be
proud?
The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (All Souls Day):
Expressing His Love It is only a few months since your husband or wife died, or perhaps your
parents who lived with you, or maybe it was your child. You get up from the sofa in the living room
to go to the kitchen, and for a split second you think you see him or her. Then you remember, "No,
Mom passed away two months ago.” Or you go to Grandpa and Grandma’s house. Only Grandma
is not there; she passed away recently. But in an unguarded moment, in the blink of an eye, with a
quick glance, you think you see her there. These are common occurrences. Certain places or events
can trigger our memory in such a powerful way that the person we remember seems present. Now,
some people will say, "Mom’s gone.” or "She’s just a memory, but she isn’t here any more,” and do
their best to move on with life. We Christians do more than that, though. Much more. For us
Christians the everyday event of sensing the presence of our departed loved ones reminds us of a
wonderful reality: our loved ones still live.
The flashback to their presence in our lives often leads us to say a prayer for them. Perhaps we
might say, "May she rest in peace, united to the Lord forever in the peace of Christ.” Why do we
pray for our deceased loved ones? Why do we have this celebration today, the Commemoration of
All Souls? Why do we dedicate the month of November to praying for the dead? Why do we have
funeral Masses? We do all these things because we believe in the power of prayer. We believe that
our continual entreaty to God to bring our loved ones to peace will prepare them to bear the fullness
of His Love in heaven. We pray because we believe in love. We believe that true love, the love that
flows from God and returns to Him, true love remains forever.
We sincerely loved the members of our family, our friends and all who have died. And we still love
them. This love which is looking for nothing other than to express itself is sacrificial love. It is
loving as Jesus loved. We are not expecting anything in return. We just want to express our love
others. We do this through prayer.
And God hears our prayers and sees the love motivated by those who have died. Some of these
loved ones are fully united to Him now. They are the saints, be they canonized by the Church,
babies and little children, or older children, Teens and adults all who died with lives so pure, so
sincere, that they are ready to endure the blaze of His Love. Some of our loved ones are not ready to
enter into His Presence. The results of their sins is still affecting them. Just like an arm broken many
years ago still hurts when the weather changes, the deceased who is forgiven his or her sins still
suffers the result of the sin.
But God’s love is motivated by the love this person inspired in others, seen in their constant prayer.
These prayers lead Him to heal the results of sin, or as we say in the terminology of the Church, to
free them from Purgatory. This was presented beautifully and succinctly by Dante Alighieri in the
second book of the Divine Comedy, The Purgatorio. There he presents the souls in purgatory as
holding themselves back from climbing the mountain of God until they are able to accept the
fulness of His Love. They are dependent on the prayers of their loved ones still on earth to prepare
them to receive the fire of God’s love.
The power of prayer is far greater, infinitely greater than we could ever imagine. Often when we
pray we call on the strength of the Almighty One to perform an action beyond our capabilities, but
not beyond His. Today we pray that the Lord heals the wounds of all who are not yet ready to enter
into the fulness of His presence. May they be healed. May any part of their lives that have been
closed to Love be completely open to the Presence of God. So we pray today for our deceased
parents, spouses, children, relatives, and friends. We know that they were good people. But we also
know that they were people.
We want them to be capable of receiving the full blast of God’s love; so we pray for them. We
celebrate funeral Masses, for that is the prayer of Jesus on the Cross for the deceased, the greatest
prayer we could offer. We have additional Masses said for our loved ones throughout the year. We
remember them in our daily prayers. And we pray for them particularly on today, All Souls Day,
and throughout the month of November. We are all united in the Community of the Church.
We are united to the saints in their triumph. We are united with the souls in purgatory in their
preparation for triumph. And the saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory are united with us in
our efforts to make Christ a reality in our world. "I will reject no one who comes to me,” the Lord
said in our gospel for today, John 6:37 We trust in the God who loves us to care for us and our
loved ones in life and in death. And so we pray, "May the souls of the faithful departed through the
mercy of God rest in peace.”
All Souls
Message: Prayer holds together our lives, our families, our parish, our world. We depend on the
solidarity of prayer. Last week we concluded a homily series titled "Trust no Matter What." The
final example of trust was a young Jewish woman (Edith Stein) converted to Christ by reading the
Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. I'd like to use St. Teresa to make a transition to our
November series on Solidarity. In one sentence St. Teresa sums up what I was trying to say about
trust: "Trust God," she says, "that you are exactly where you are meant to be." Let me repeat: "Trust
God that you are exactly where you are meant to be."
By whatever strange path you have come to this place, God has put you right here, right now - and
he has a plan for your. His plan involves solidarity - joining yourself to others. That is our theme for
November - solidarity. November begins with two celebrations of solidarity: All Saints Day (Nov
1) and All Souls Day (Nov 2). These celebrations show that in God we have solidarity not only with
believers here on earth, but also with saints in heaven and with our faithful departed loved ones. St.
Teresa speaks about our union with the saints in heaven. She explains it this way: In praying the
Our Father we say, "thy kingdom come."
A king, she say, does not come alone. He has his knights, ladies and court with him. Just so, when
God comes he brings his heavenly court with him. In God we have solidarity with the saints - those
united with him here on earth as well as those already in heaven. They pray for us. In the All Saints
Day reading John describes that enormous throng. We have solidarity with them and also with those
who died in his grace, but are sill on the way to complete union. We pray for them. Let me use my
own parents as an example.
They died with the sacraments and I feel confident they are with God, but they might still be
experiencing some final purification. So I continue to pray for them and remember them at Mass.
Christians have done this from earliest times - as did the Jewish people in the centuries before
Christ (see 2 Maccabees 12:38-46). We pray for our Faithful Departed loved ones. They are part of
our solidarity of prayer. Now, let me try to explain why we need this solidarity of prayer. There was
a philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche who said that the driving force of history is resentment.*
One group harms another and they harm back. So resentment grows and grows. When you look at
our world today it seems like we are pulling apart and destined to destroy each other.
I will speak more about solidarity in the coming Sundays. Today as your pastor I invite you to pray
for and with your fellow parishioners - especially our youth. I encourage you to sign a card
indicating your prayer commitment. We have a particular card for youth and children. In light of all
that is happening in our world, especially the shootings at Marysville High School, it is vitally
important that we make this commitment to prayer for each other and for our youth. I would like to
conclude with a prayer by St.
Teresa. They call it her "bookmark." She wrote it on a scrap of paper and read it every day. She
used it to mark her place in whatever book she was reading. I have printed it in the bulletin in both
English and the original Spanish. I invite you to close your eyes and to pray it with me as I recite it:
Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things are passing, but God does not change.
Patience obtains all. Those who have God lack nothing. God alone is enough. Amen.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Lectionary: 668; John 6: 37-40
The Sunday celebration of the Eucharist is the ultimate commemoration of the Lord's resurrection,
and of our participation in it. For this reason the Church rarely cedes this occasion to focus on other
saints, should their feast days happen to fall on a Sunday.
There are a few exceptions: the feast of Saint Peter and Paul on June 29th comes to mind, yet even
there it is due to those great saints' particularly close association with Christ and the proclamation of
his death and resurrection that the Church "sets aside” the regular Sunday mass to honor them.
Next week, too, we celebrate the Dedication of the Church of St. John Lateran on a Sunday, though
this is owing to the original dedication of that great Roman basilica in the time of Constantine as the
church of the Holy Savior—Christ himself. Today therefore is unusual in that the celebration of the
Sunday Eucharist focuses on the mystery of Christ's resurrection through a very special lens indeed:
on this All Souls' Day we remember the dead. Not the saints—that was yesterday—but the dead.
The Church's commemoration of All Souls' Day has been shaped over the centuries by words and
symbols which help us to face the pain and difficulty of an encounter with death with great hope.
The readings today play a beautiful role in this process, presenting to us some inspiring words to
strengthen us when we are troubled by the thought of death, and to give us a sense of peace and
even joy. The Old Testament passage from the book of Wisdom reminds us that ultimately the souls
of all the departed "are in the hands of God”, and that there is nowhere we should rather they be.
These words can be hard to accept at first, because we naturally like to think that our loved one is
"in heaven”. If we are honest, however, we realize that these words allow God the freedom to do
what only God can do: to heal, to teach, and to judge in a manner that is characterized by perfect
justice and perfect mercy at the same time. Heaven on God's terms, not ours. Next, St. Paul reminds
us in the letter to the Romans that upon the death of a loved one we ought to call to mind and take
comfort in their baptism, remembering that as surely as that loved one has now shared with Jesus in
death (symbolized by immersion into the water of the baptismal font), he or she now abides in the
hope of sharing with Jesus in his new and eternal life.
John's gospel has the final word on All Souls' Day, speaking to us as it does about God's will to
bring all his children to salvation through Christ. Jesus himself confirms not only the Father's will
but announces his own desire to see the will of the Father brought to completion: "I will not reject
anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of
the one who sent me” (John 6:37-38).
This Sunday as we commemorate the departed faithful let us see it as an opportunity to grow in trust
in the Lord, recalling that our hope for the resurrection from the dead of a loved one comes not
through their own merit or through our desires for them but through the mystery of Christ who
experienced death himself in order that we all might have new and eternal life in him who said:
"This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal
life, and I shall raise him on the last day” (John 6:40). Father Edward Mazich, O.S.B.
Meeting Christ in the Liturgy
All Souls
Ch 1, v 14 - Ch 2, v 2. v 8-10; Psalm 131; 1 Thes Ch 2, v 7-9. v 13;
Matthew Ch 23, v 1-12
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, "Call no one on earth your father. Call no one on earth your teacher."
Our Lord is the Truth incarnate, and uses many means to impart the truth. Only by a proper
understanding of his words can we properly follow his teaching. Is our Lord forbidding us to use
the name "father" to describe our parents or godparents? Should we no longer call our "teachers" by
that name? In another place in the Gospel, our Lord says, "Only one is good, our heavenly Father."
Did he mean that he himself was not good? Of course not. Our Lord uses a style of teaching which
grabs our attention, and for that reason often is not what it at first appears to be. The point that our
Lord impresses upon us here is that all fatherhood comes from God, and all fatherhood should be
referred back to God and lived in accord with the goodness and love of God. St. Paul himself
claimed the title "father". We read in 1 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 14, "I...write this to...you as my
beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers.
For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel."
Was St. Paul in violation of the Gospel? Not at all. He understood our Lord's teaching and applied it
properly in his life, as we ourselves must do. He was "father" precisely in reference to God our
heavenly father, because he brought the life of God the Father to those to whom he preached, whom
he baptized and adopted into the family of God. And so also today with our priests The priesthood
is a precious gift beyond our understanding.
Mere men are able, through the gift of ordination, to share in the one true priesthood of Jesus Christ,
the High Priest. "In the ecclesial service of the ordained minister, it is Christ himself who is present
to his Church as Head of his Body, Shepherd of his flock, high priest of the redemptive sacrifice,
Teacher of Truth." (CCC 1548)
Beginning with the Apostles, the first priests created by our Lord on Holy Thursday, and handed
down through the laying on of hands and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, down to our own day,
every man who shares in that gift brings the life and love of Christ to the whole world. This is a
scandal-ridden age, and the Church always suffers in her members from the effects of scandal.
"Scandals will come, but woe to those by whom they come." But we must always hold fast to the
truth. And the truth about the priesthood is that the Fatherhood of God, perfectly revealed to us in
Jesus Christ the Priest, is ours through the men we call "Father".
We are children of God through the preaching of the truth by our deacons and priests and the grace
of the sacramental life they dispense. In this age of error and falsehood we are desperately in need
of the truth of Christ the Teacher through the word and counsel of our priest-fathers. We are
children of God through baptism at the hands of our priests. We shed the weight and shame of sin,
by the words of forgiveness, "Ego te absolvo", from Christ through our priests. In this manner we
become again the beloved children of God we were destined to be from the beginning of time.
We receive the very Body and Blood of Christ through the hands of our priests in the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass. There are some today who wish to pretend that lay members of Christ's faithful people
can substitute for the priest as the one who offers the Sacrifice and confects the Eucharist. This is
not so. The Second Vatican Council teaches that all the baptized share in the one priesthood of
Christ but that the ministerial priesthood, in service to all the baptized, differs in kind and not just in
degree from the common priesthood of the faithful. "...the priest, by virtue of the sacrament of Holy
Orders, acts in persona Christi Capitis." (CCC 1548) The ordained priest is ontologically changed,
in the core of his being, and is "a priest forever".
He teaches, preaches, offers the Sacrifice, baptizes "in persona Christi", in the very person of Jesus
Christ. Lay members of the faithful can never, by power of their baptism, make Christ truly present
on our altars. Let us honor and pray for all men who share, always unworthily, in the one priesthood
of Christ.
Let us shun detraction and calumny against priests, as we should concerning all our brothers and
sisters. And let us proclaim and teach the sublime dignity and beauty of the priesthood, through
which we always meet, know and love our Lord Jesus Christ in the Sacramental life This week, take
a moment to thank your priest for "being a priest". Let's pray for each other until, again next week,
we "meet Christ in the liturgy",