+ J. M. J. +
Homily Outline for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed
(All Souls' Day) 2 Nov 2014
Every year we enter into November, the last month of the liturgical year, with two beautiful feasts… on November 1st, All Saints’ Day, and on Nov. 2nd, All Souls’ Day! The Church makes use of the natural symbols of the year's end, at least in the northern hemisphere... the shortening days, the cold, the first snows... us gardeners are making our final harvests (I picked my parsnips yesterday!) In the course of the years, about every 7 years it falls on Sunday, and we celebrate this liturgy in the place of our normal Sunday liturgy. This gives us a beautiful chance to reflect on the significance of this feast!
To set the context for All Souls’ Day, let me remind of you of a traditional way of thinking about all those who make up the Church, the Living Body of Christ. We can divide the Church up into three pieces: first, the Church Militant, that is, all us who are living, engaged in the daily battle of earthly life. We call it the Church Militant not because it is violent, but because life is truly a struggle. Then we have those who have already entered into the Father’s Glory, who we celebrated with All Saints’ Day, the Church Triumphant, or Glorious! Countless men, women, and children, some of them canonized, who see God Face to Face, who sing His praises, who experience the perfect joy of Heaven. The group in-between, so to speak, is the group we pray for today on All Souls’ Day… the Church Suffering, or the Church Penitent… all those souls in Purgatory. Just as we are united by ties of love and prayer with all those living the mortal life, and with all those living the eternal life, we are also united with those who are being purged and purified. We ask the saints to pray for us, and we in turn pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory.
I discuss this at some length in my bulletin column, which I hope you'll read, but let me just briefly mention that the Catholic Church absolutely believes in the existence of purgatory… it was not fashionable to say so, and many people have been falsely taught otherwise, but this is the firm, dogmatic teaching of the Church.
What is purgatory all about? Well… it’s all about God’s love, the full extent to which God loves us! The only thing that can send us to Hell is our obstinate and definitive refusal to accept God’s grace before the moment of our death. As C.S. Lewis says, "At the end of our lives, either we will say to God, 'Thy will be done,' or God will say to us, 'thy will be done.'" As I’ve said before, our choices here in this life have eternal consequences! If we say yes to God’s love, even if it’s imperfectly, even if it’s at the last minute, with our dying breath, then God floods us with His mercy! I have seen this grace at work on many deathbeds myself! I've been blessed to see people make a good confession after years, or even decades, or to anoint someone who has been unconscious for days or weeks, and have them suddenly breathe their last, just moments after being anointed, as if they were waiting....
But imagine that one who has said yes to God has nonetheless held onto sin in his or her life? Take two extreme cases… what if in his final gasps after he had taken the poison pill, Adolf Hitler silently cried out to God for mercy? What if Judas Iscariot repented as he fell from the tree where he was hanging himself? It’s grisly to think about, but we don’t deny the possibility… and if God’s mercy was in even the slightest way accepted, we trust that even those two men could be saved. They come into God’s presence, suddenly seeing with perfect clarity all the ways they have spat upon His generosity… what would that be like? God loves us too much to leave us for all eternity lamenting our scabs and scars, lamenting the ways our yes has been incomplete… and so the fire of His love burns all that away! Think of a wound being cleaned so it can be sutured, or of grueling physical therapy that restores full range of motion. My mom just had her knee replaced, and she has hours of physical therapy each week... it isn't easy, it isn't enjoyable. And imagine the physical therapist... he or she doesn't enjoy causing pain to their patient, but the love them enough to seek their healing. Think of the way we must learn to love once again someone who has deeply hurt us. Parents and children recovering from division... any married couple that has been married for more than 10 minutes! It's not easy to renew a relationship after hurt or betrayal.
God won’t save us with out us… His gift of eternal life isn’t superficial, snow on a dung heap as Luther so infamously said… rather God’s love must penetrate to the very depths of our being. To whatever extent we have not allowed that at the moment of our death, purgatory is the place where that purification and transformation is accomplished. How exactly this works, we do not know, and so we use the image of a purifying fire, or even in jokes the idea of a penance opposite our sin, or the idea of the passing of time… but this is all metaphorical and mysterious. In some sense, the soul in Purgatory is in the very same place it will always be, in the Fire of God’s love, but at first that is painful as the brokenness is cleansed away. What if one of us were to suddenly be at the surface of the sun... momentarily we'd be very much unlike the sun, but suddenly we would become heat and light.
And so, having said all that, we come to these black vestments I’m wearing! Since the Vatican Council, the Church has specified that for funeral Masses and for All Souls’ Day, the priest should vest in either black, or purple, or white. Like you, I've almost always seen white used, but all three are suggested. White is the color of resurrection and baptism, purple is the color of penitence and sorrow, and black is the color of mourning and humility. The use of black is not meant to specify hopelessness, but rather to recognize the reality of mortal death. To take a phrase from a very different cultural context, black is beautiful! Let suggest three images…
First, a simple one, Cajun blackened catfish… if you like spicy food, this is the cat’s meow! The intensity of flavor and spice is out of this world. As the fish is fried in a heavy coating of spices, the heat melds and intensifies the flavors, deepening their zest and power. So also, live lived in light of mortality is full of flavor and spice, rather than being superficial and bland.
Second, for the gardeners out there, think of good black soil! A gardener doesn't want pale sand or greasy red clay, but rather dark black rich soil. All the organic material in a compost pile breaks down into a rich humus, full of nutrients, able to absorb water. Such soil yields a rich, fruitful harvest. A life lived in contact with the reality of our mortality, the reality of God's justice and mercy, will also be fruitful, yielding a rich harvest.
Finally take a black night, say in February when it's 20 below zero (it seems like we had about 50 of them last year)... there's no moisture in the air, and before the moon rises, it's a black as it can be. But what can you see on such a night? The stars... thousands of them, in all their brilliant glory and beauty. So many beautiful stars that it can be hard to even find familiar constellations.... and the milky way emblazoned across the sky! If we live our life in light of our mortality, the beautiful truth of God's merciful love, then we will be able to see the beauty of God's light shining in darkness, far more beautiful than the artificial light of false hope...
So on this All Soul's day, we come now to this altar to receive the food of eternal life, to offer this sacrifice for all our loved ones who have died. We bring them in our hearts to this altar, and we ask God to receive them into His kingdom, purified, cleansed, and made new. We ask God for the grace to live in the light of His truth, aware of our mortality, aware of His offer of eternal life... In the silence now let us call to mind all who we pray for today, our family members and friends who have died, especially those most in need of God's mercy.
+ A. M. D. G. +
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