All Souls Day Homily

As you will notice the Gospel that was used for this Mass is exactly the same as the one that was heard on All Saints Day. I purposely chose this Gospel for our Mass today because what we commemorate today is closely related to All Saints Day. It is on All Saints Day where we gather to venerate all of the saints that have already been called home to share in the beatific vision of Heaven. The Commemoration of all the faithful departed, on the other hand, is the day when we gather to hold in our prayers all of the souls who have gone before us because we know that the path they are currently upon leads to Heaven. They pass through Purgatory as they are cleansed to behold and live out for the rest of eternity the love of God. With All Saints Day we are shown this love that will be lived out for all eternity and are inspired to join in that hope, but with All Souls Day we are reminded of the sting of death and how it will ultimately catch up to us one day if we would like it or not. Faced with our own mortality we must begin to realize that we only have so long to turn away from sin and to trust in God's unending mercy.

The greatest service that we can give the deceased is not proclaiming them saints through our own merit, but instead is having the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered for them and remembering to pray for the repose of their souls. We should do this because they are oriented entirely towards God at this moment, but still as the Book of Wisdom puts it: "as gold in the furnace he proved them." No matter how holy the soul seems to be they will still need to be cleansed of those minor things which in this life has keep them from perfect union with God. Saint Catherine of Genoa believed that there is no happiness anywhere as great as the souls in Purgatory except of course as the souls already in Heaven. Purgatory is not a state of punishment, but is a state where one allows God to put back together all the brokenness of their life and thus over time to share more and more inside of the beatific vision of Heaven.

If we truly desire to join inside of this beatific vision one day we can look towards the beatitudes as a map of how this is possible. The beatitudes are a reminder for us of the separation that is necessary from the things of this world. Surely when we spend some time in meditation with the beatitudes we will realize that we have all probably many times failed to follow them or trust inside of the knowledge that they contain. Instead we have latched ourselves onto the wordily examples that were given by Christ instead of trusting in their opposite which leads to true liberation of self and the opening of one's heart entirely to God's love. As Saint Paul reminded us in his letter to the Romans: "we were baptized into Christ's death." This means that through baptism our journey towards God was begun and will of course reach its culmination at the point when we join inside of the beatific vision. To join in the beatific vision requires that we over time purge ourselves of everything that has enslaved us to the world and thus caused us into the distortion of our love.

As we commemorate all the faithful departed on this day may be comforted in the sorrow that we may feel because "death no longer has power over them." They have all been found worthy to become saints in Heaven and with each moment that passes they draw closer to that goal. May we never forget the importance that exists concerning our prayers for these souls because they are still upon a journey of shedding away everything that has kept them from loving God entirely. As we pray for them may we be faced with our own mortality and desire that at the end of our time on this earth that we will not be plagued by sin especially mortal sin, but instead will be living out the beatitudes faithfully. The Lord is indeed our shepherd who leads these souls to Heaven as He also leads us towards the daily conversion from our sin.