All Souls, 02.11.2018
Isaiah 25:6-9 /
Romans 5:5-11 / John 6:37-40
One of the most emotionally charged occasions that we often
come across would be at a funeral.
The death of a person, and more so a loved one, is usually
accompanied with grief and sorrow and tears.
Words of condolences are few and short because no amount of
words, no matter how profound can bring a dead person back to life.
And if words are to be used, then they must be carefully
chosen and it is certainly not a time to take the matter lightly or make a joke
out of it. But things can go wrong, unintentionally of course.
Like this one about the florist’s mistake. On opening his
new shop, the owner received a bouquet of flowers. He became dismayed on
reading the enclosed card because it read “Deepest Condolences”.
While he was wondering about the message, his phone rang. It
was from the florist, apologizing for having sent the wrong card.
“Oh, it’s alright,” said the man. “I am a businessman and I
understand how these things can happen.”
The florist said, “But I accidentally sent your card to the
funeral wake.”
The man asked, “Oh! What did it say?”
The florist replied, “Congratulations on your new location.”
Certainly it was an awkward mistake, unintentional and no
one would be laughing at it.
Nonetheless, it may reflect in a certain way, our hope for a
departed loved one.
We hope and we pray that our departed loved ones would be in
heaven and enjoy eternal rest, and are at peace.
As we would often hear at funeral wakes – he/she is in a
better place, a better location, so to speak.
And that’s the purpose of coming for Mass on All Souls Day.
We pray that God will grant our departed loved ones eternal rest in His
presence.
But things may not be as simple as we would like it to be,
as in that when we die we will go straight to heaven.
Because the reality is that as in life, so it is in death.
We who live in this world would know how much we can be
attached to this world.
We are attached not just to things but more so to our loved
ones and to the relationships that we have built in this world.
Even at our last breath, we may not want to let go easily of
our life and detach ourselves from our loved ones.
Even though the Lord of life is calling us to the eternal
light, we can’t help but keep glancing at the lights of this world that we have
shared with our loved ones.
My father passed away in June, just three months before he
could celebrate the diamond wedding anniversary with my mum and the family.
He had hoped and talked about it before his death but he
didn’t get to live to celebrate it.
Although he died peacefully, we also know that he had some
earthly hopes that could not be fulfilled.
And so this year’s All Souls Day is especially meaningful
for my family and me as we pray that my father will rest in peace.
Similarly, you too have come to pray for your departed loved
ones that they will rest in peace.
As the Church teaches us, “all who die in God’s grace and
friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal
salvation. But after death, they undergo purification, so as to achieve the
holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.
Yes, we must pray for our departed loved ones, as well as
for those who are forgotten or who have no one to pray for them.
More than just moving to a “new location”, we pray that they
will see the eternal light and set on a new direction, a direction towards the
God of life who will give them eternal rest.
And even as we pray, may we even while on earth, set our
direction towards God and find life and love, peace and joy.
****
In our modern world, the advancement of technology is
supposed to make our lives easier and more convenient.
But it seems that technological progress has merely provided
us with more efficient means for going backwards. (Aldous Huxley)
It is said that men have become the tools of their tools.
(Henry David Thoreau). In other words, instead of making use of technology, it
is becoming the other way round – technology is making use of us.
The expression of this is in the two phrases we use almost
every day: “I am busy” and “I have no time”.
In a way, we envy those who have passed on, especially when
we pray for them in these words: Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and let
perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.
So we pray that the departed will rest in peace. We hope
that they will rest in peace.
But are they really resting in peace? And that is the
question that we are to think about as we join the Church to commemorate the
faithful departed on this day.
This commemoration is associated with the doctrine that the
souls of the faithful who at death have not been cleansed from the temporal
punishment due to sin and from attachment to mortal sins.
They cannot immediately attain the joys of heaven, and they
may be helped to do so by prayer and by the sacrifice of the Mass. In other
words, when they died, they had not yet attained full sanctification and moral
perfection, a requirement for entrance into Heaven. This sanctification is carried
out in Purgatory.
There is the practice that the entire month of November
became associated with prayer for the departed; lists of names of those to be
remembered were being placed in the proximity of the altar on which the
sacrifice of the Mass is offered.
A legend is given by Peter Damiani in his “Life of St.
Odilo”: a pilgrim returning from the Holy Land was cast by a storm on a
desolate island. A hermit living there told him that amid the rocks was a cleft
that was “communicating” with purgatory, from which perpetually rose the groans
of tortured souls. The hermit also claimed he had heard the demons complaining
of the efficacy of the prayers of the faithful, in rescuing their victims.
It may be just a legend, but the truth of it is that our
prayers for the faithful departed has its efficacy in helping them to purify
themselves for heaven.
Yes, souls in Purgatory need our prayers otherwise today
will just be a day we remember our departed loved ones and nothing else.
On All Souls Dy, we not only remember the departed, but we
apply our efforts, through prayer, almsgiving, and the Mass, to their release
from Purgatory.
We do this by coming to church for Mass and by visiting
cemetery or columbarium and offering a prayer for the souls in Purgatory.
For the parish, we will go over later to our parish
columbarium to bless the niches of the departed as an expression of asking for
God’s blessings on them so that they will be purified and gain entry into
heaven.
Praying for the departed is a Christian obligation. In the
modern world, when many have come to doubt the Church's teaching on Purgatory,
the need for such prayers must increase and has increased, as can be seen by
the high numbers of Mass offerings for the faithful departed and the attendance
at Mass today.
In our modern world, with all the technology, we are still
busy and have no time.
But today we have taken time to remember and pray for the
faithful departed and our departed loved ones.
All the technology can’t help them. Only we can help them
with our prayers so that they can truly rest in peace.
And the time will come when we will need the prayers of the
living to help us attain eternal rest.
(SY)