All Souls’ Day
Reflection:
All Souls Day is traditionally the third day of All Hallowtide—right after Halloween and All Saints’ Day. These three days have invited people into deeper communion with the dead, from ancient times right up until the present.
Yesterday, when we celebrated All Saints Day, we remembered those recognized by the Church as saints. And today we commemorate all others who have passed away in union with Christ, the “faithful departed”. These people are described as “the souls of the just” in today’s first reading from the Book of Wisdom.
In our second reading for today, St. Paul declares:
For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.
Romans 6:3
In the years leading up to, and until the end of World War II, there was widespread suffering and death in Germany: shortages of food, unemployment, and religious repression. Many of the faithful departed grew in their union with Jesus under the oppression of the Nazis, either by accompanying others in their sufferings and deaths, or by their own physical death for their faith.
Passionist Fr. Viktor Koch, a German American, came to Schwarzenfeld, a small town in southern Germany in 1933 and built a monastery there. Fr. Viktor stayed with his people, even after his monastery was confiscated by the Nazis and the other priests were forced out. Fr. Viktor’s story is carefully researched and beautifully written by his niece, Katherine Koch, in the historical novel, The Sower of Black Field.
Just thirty-four miles north of Schwarzenfeld was a concentration camp at Flossenbürg. In April of 1945, Fr. Viktor led a burial service for some prisoners who died in Schwarzenfeld after being removed from this camp. A Lutheran pastor and theologian who spoke out against the Nazis was hanged at Flossenbürg in the same month. His name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and he led a final worship service for fellow prisoners just before his execution. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, he described his relationship with Jesus: “Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.” Bonhoeffer’s final words were:
This is the end—for me, the beginning of life.
Today, we thank God for the faithful witness of all those departed who lived their lives in union with Jesus! “For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.” Romans 6:3
