Rest in the heart of God, in a silence of faith and love.
St. Paul of the Cross
This year, the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed falls on Sunday, November 2.
In many western cultures, Sunday was often the day that a family would visit the cemetery where a parent, a child or a sibling was buried and remembered. It is often an opportunity for the survivors to heal from the pain that death often brings.
Dying can be a time that brings fear of the unknown into the heart of the person whose life is expiring; or it can be a time of solace and comfort to the loved ones of a person because death brings long-term suffering and pain to a close [Revelation 21:4].
In today’s Jewish funeral prayers, there is a confidence that the soul of the deceased person will be “covered in the wings of the All-Merciful One forever,” while “binding his/her soul to the bond of life” and resting in peace.
These Jewish prayers echo our reading for today from the Book of Wisdom:
Those who trust in him shall understand truth, and the faithful shall abide with him in love: Because grace and mercy are with his holy ones, and his care is with his elect.
Wisdom 3:9 (NABRE)
Our Christian tradition continues to place death in the context of the Resurrection of Jesus:
If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him.
Romans 6:8-9 (NABRE)
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to the multitude of John’s sixth chapter, whom he has nourished in the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves:
For 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 (NABRE)
In this Jubilee Year of Hope, as we put aside many of the day’s regular activities to remember our deceased loved ones, let us ask God to fill our hearts with the hope that unites us across the threshold of death. It is the hope that God’s promises to us will be fulfilled for each of us, as they already are for all of our departed faithful.
This November, the month of the Faithful Departed, we invite you to share the names of those for whom you would like us to pray.
