John 6:37-40 All Souls Day Today

John 6:37-40  All Souls Day Today

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Jesus said to the crowds:  “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 Lord loves me just the way I am.  Today, I am reminded that He loves me even more than that. 

We are a fallen creature, a very superficial kind of being of the headlines type.  We are magnetic towards negative gossip, sensationalism and depressing news.  We are folks of a somewhat depressing nature.  What makes the news today is what pumps most of our hearts.  Yes, we are good but we are in dire need of purification.

Billions of people have lived on the earth.  Our history books include a tiny fraction of them.  God includes all of them.  He knows all of them.  If our Heavenly Father has the time and ability to count the hair on our head, then He can make count all the lives that were lived.    

Billions of people have been baptized.  Only a fraction of them have been declared saints.  But for every known saint, we know there are millions that are unknown.   For this reason, every November 1^st is a day of celebration, a day for us to celebrate the lives of all the saints in heaven. 

But like every celebration, once it is over, the very next day we must get back to work.  Today, we must pray.  We must pray for all the faithful departed who, with great anticipation, eagerly wait to see the face of the Lord.  We must do only what we can do.  We must care for them and fight for them, and that is a lot. 

Often I think of All Souls Day as a long day in the hospital; that is, a day when family members must make tough decisions and tough sacrifices for their incapacitated brothers and sisters; a day in which their prayers, sacrifices and presence can actually save the lives of their brothers and sisters.  For although their loved ones may be physically present, they are far from them; though they are breathing, they are not quite living. 

In a similar way, the souls of the faithfully departed are in an incapacitated state.  Though they are no longer physically among us, they are not far from us.  Though they are no longer breathing, they are still living.  And just like family members can make all the difference in the world for their sick and injured loved ones, so too we make all the difference in the world for our faithfully departed brothers and sisters.

Let us pray for those who can no longer pray for themselves.  Let us offer sacrifices for those who can no longer offer an acceptable sacrifice for themselves.  Let us love those who can no longer love others.   This is not something weird.  This is natural.  We do it with our dead.  We do it with our heroes.  We do it for our loved ones.  The Lord did not simply die for the living.  He died for the dead as well. 

This is how Christ showed His love.  This is how we can show our love.  We are a family forever.  Heaven may dissolve marriages on earth but only because heaven unites us as brothers and sisters in the one love that is of God our Father and our brother Jesus Christ. 

May the souls of the faithfully departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Luke 12:13-21 Beware!

Luke 12:13-21  Beware!

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Jesus said to the crowd:  “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.”

 

One of the toughest challenges a priest faces is to talk about someone they did not know.  Funeral Masses can be very challenging.  Family members can find it hard to express their loved one’s life.  Friends seem to remember only the most frivolous or superficial (as well as embarrassing) things about the deceased.  The “natural” tendency we have is to turn a eulogy into a stand-up comedy.  Those who do so think they are helping the living out by breaking through a moment of seriousness and sadness with a joke.  Well, it may work, but do we have to break our sadness by just cracking jokes?  Could we not do better? 

Often I need to sit down with family members and friends to ask them to describe the deceased’s life.  Even with that, I don’t get much to work on.  I get more statistics than substance; more stories than significance; more means than ends; more accomplishments than goals.

For example:  A person’s goal in life should never be that he/she remained sober most of their life.  That’s not a goal; it’s a means to an end.   A person remains sober because they want to be a better husband or wife; a more relevant mother or father; a more loving brother or sister; a holy person.  That's the goal. 

I think it would be great if everyone wrote their own obituary.  I think it would be wonderful to let loved ones know, in your own words, what you thought of them.  Do not leave it to others to do it for you.  Why?  Because they don’t know you as well as you know yourself.  They don’t know what is important to you.  And you never know who will end up writing it for you.

A long time ago, I was specifically requested to celebrate a funeral Mass for a man I did not know.  I was honored yet surprised to learn that the family had asked me.  So I asked the family to help me give this man the recognition he deserved.  I asked them to write something down for me.  His ex-wife did it.  I won’t go into the details but it was not helpful.  I did not want his farewell to be his last confession!

Sometimes people consider it important to highlight their loved one’s economic success story; or their hobbies; or what they loved to collect (like beer cans and match boxes or lighters).  They neglect to mention what mattered the most because they don't know what matters most.  But when they do know, it makes all the difference in the world.  

Recently, I performed a funeral for a man who loved to collect things.  In fact, he collected many things.  That was interesting, but was that really important to him?  Did that really describe his life?  Finally, someone mentioned that he cherished his friends.  He never lost a friend.” 

That was it!  That’s what I needed to hear.  Yes, he collected many things in his life, but his greatest collection was his friendships.  He collected friends throughout his entire life and never lost a single one.  He cherished everything and everyone in his life.

What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishments?  In your life, who influenced you the most?  What did your family mean to you?  Who did you listen to the most?  Who should you have listened to?  What did you consider to be important?  If there was anything you could have changed, what would it have been? What advice would you like to give to your loved ones; to others? 

In today’s Gospel, the Lord tells his listeners a parable regarding a man who stored up treasure on earth but forgot about the things that mattered most.   One night he passed away, unexpectedly. God said to the man, “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?  Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God. 

We do not know the hour or the day in which our journey on earth will end.  It’s good to start thinking about what matters most and to write it all down.  Believe me, this is not just practical advice for the elderly, the sick or the dying.  This is something that we should all be doing, and periodically updating.  Even kids should be doing this.  They could do it in religion class.  It will help them to focus more on what matters the most (God, family and friends) and less on what matters the least:  themselves and being popular.