Homily for All Souls Day

There is a local cemetery in Lake Orion, right around the corner from the parish where I had been pastor for 31 years. I buried a lot of people in that cemetery, so I know a lot of the neighbors. We bought graves there for our whole family. When people found out that a priest was going to buried in the cemetery, all the graves around us sold.

I have Mass on Sunday, November 2nd at St. Isidore @ 7:30/9:30 am. The 7:30 am Mass will be live-streamed. https://stisidore.church/worship-online/

frjoedailey@gmail.com

Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. 

Jesus said to the crowds, "Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. 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." 

The Gospel of the Lord 

My family has lived in several different states, so when my father died we weren't sure where to bury him. There's a local cemetery in Lake Orion right around the corner from the parish where I had been pastor for thirty-one years. I buried a lot of people in that cemetery, so I know a lot of the neighbors. We bought graves there for our whole family. When people found out that a priest was going to be buried in the cemetery, all of the graves around us sold. 

None of us are self-made. Others are necessarily involved in the very creation of ourselves. Remember that you once thought your life was good enough until you fell in love, until your child was born, until the right person came along. Then everything that went before seemed so very impoverished. You cannot count how many people you have met in life, but you can trace the transformation that certain people have brought into your life. 

We are never done weaving ourselves, but we die unfinished. We enter the kingdom in tatters, fragments of self. On All Souls' Day, we imagine the process where God, in His mercy, gathers up our fragments of self. God heals our wounds and brings the work we began in Him to completion. "And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what He gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day." 

We do not come to God alone. Someone brings us to faith, and we help others find their way to God. There is no solitary way to heaven. In our Catholic imagination, if we are going to be saved, we are saved together. 

Remember the story of the woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years? She thought if she could just touch Jesus' garment, she would be healed. Jesus noticed the touch and asked, "Who touched my garment?" The disciples answered, "You can see this crowd pressing in on you. How can you say, 'Who touched me?'" She only touched His garment. But in their eyes, she was touching Jesus. 

Father Ron Rolheiser says that if someone we love strays from the Church in terms of faith practice and morality, as long as you continue to love that person and hold that one in love and forgiveness, he or she is touching the hem of Christ's garment. They are being held to the body of Christ and are being forgiven by God, irrespective of their external relationship to the Church. They are touching the body of Christ because your touch is Christ's touch. When you touch someone, unless that person actively rejects your love and forgiveness, he or she is relating to the body of Christ. And this is true even beyond death. 

Every one of us dies alone, and when we die, each of us stands alone before God. This is true, but it's not the whole story. In the ancient world, no one thought of themselves as individuals. They were part of a people. Right from the beginning, God recognized that it's not good for humans to be alone, so we are made for each other. Whenever we gather together for Mass, we believe that the whole communion of saints gather with us in prayer. 

As we heard in the book of Wisdom, one of the last books of the Old Testament “The souls of the just are in the hands of God. There hope is full of immortality.” At the time of Jesus, the idea of the resurrection from the dead was already percolating in the air. Charles Peguy, a French poet, said that when Jesus was raised from the dead and appeared to his disciples, the disciples would not have been so surprised that Jesus had been raised from the dead, but that he was alone. Where are the others? Because what happens to one happens to all. In the words of St. Paul, "Christ is the firstborn from the dead." 

When we stand before God, we do not stand alone. All those who love us stand with us, and all those we have loved, they too stand with us, assisting us, urging us to hold on to love and not let go. There are people on this earth whom you are destined to meet who changed everything about you. God created these men and women. Why wouldn't you think that meeting their Creator and your own will be the most radical transformation that you can experience? This is what happens when we encounter true love. 

We can trust these words. Trust is a beautiful word. It literally means to believe together, confident in Latin. We do not hope alone, but in the community of faith, and hope does not disappoint. 

When everything seemed lost and there was no future, Jesus did this extraordinary thing. When he was having supper with his friends, he took bread and gave it to them saying, "This is my body given for you." When the only future seemed to be the cross, that he made this mad, generous, loving gesture, that's the basis for our hope. Every time we gather as a community for the Eucharist, we are taken back to that dark moment and that unexpected gift of the future. The last supper seems the end, the last supper. But it was just the beginning, the first Eucharist.