Sunday, November 2, 2014 - Commemoration of the Faithful Departed - Not the end, but a transition

To read the texts click on the texts: Isa 25:6-9; 1 Thes 4:13-18; Mt 11:25-30

Whenever the Commemoration of the faithful departed (All Souls) falls on a Sunday, the following Sunday is the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St John Lateran. Each of these days in its own way is an invitation to reflect on the meaning of God’s people gathered to be church.

The commemoration of the faithful departed reminds us that we are still one with those who have gone before us into eternal life, and that death is not and can never be the end. Since they are alive, we still owe them love and support in Christ’s name, even beyond the grave.

While the readings for today’s feast may be chosen from a great variety found in the Masses for the dead, I have taken the ones mentioned above. This gives us an opportunity to look at the mystery of death and the new life that Christ has won and promised for all of us who believe.

The question of where we go when we die is a question that has puzzled and continues to puzzle the minds of many, It is a question that brings out the fact that we realize that his life has to end and all of us, no matter how strong we are, no matter how rich or poor, have to die some day. Death has been and will continue to be a mystery. While we know that we have to die and today with the advancement of science and technology can delay death for some time, and we can tell how a person may have died, what we will never know, what will always remain a mystery, is why a person must die at a particular moment in time. This feast does not provide the answer to this question, but informs us that for us, as believers, death is not and can never be the end.

It is quite amazing to find a text like the first reading of today in the Old Testament in which we do not find any clear theology of the resurrection of the dead. During most of the time before Christ, only a vague idea of afterlife is found: an “abode of the dead” called Sheol, whose inhabitants had only a shadowy existence. God’s favour or disfavour was understood only in terms of the present life. However, as hard times and tragedies befell the Jewish people, ideas of life beyond this life began to emerge. Isaiah saw this as eternal restoration of the nation, where death would be destroyed and the whole people would live forever. The text comes from within the block of material known as “The Isaiah Apocalypse” (Is 24-27). The view of the future within these chapters is universal in outlook and speaks of God’s power in the cosmic as well as the earthly realm.  An invitation to a feast is issued and those who will heed the call are invited to the mountain of the Lord, Zion with the choicest of food and drink. It is an invitation to feast and rejoice and an assurance that all tears will be wiped away God will reveal himself as a God who saves. Death itself will be destroyed.

In the Gospel text Jesus responds to the disciples of John the Baptist to their question whether Jesus was the Messiah, expressed exasperation with the crowd who recognize neither John nor Jesus, and denounces the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. Indeed, this entire section of Matthew’s Gospel seems to dwell on the “failure” on the part of Jesus to measure up to the expectations people had in terms of what a “Messiah” would look or act like.

But despite so much blindness and such closed attitudes, this is not the last word. The invitation and message will find acceptance among the open and receptive of which there are still some left. For the most part the wise tend to become proud and self-sufficient and unreceptive. On the other hand, the childlike are most often unself-conscious, open, dependent, and receptive. They are willing to let God work in their lives. They are willing to believe that in Jesus, God has indeed brought salvation from sin, failure and even death itself.

Even as we commemorate the faithful departed, we must remember that the readings of today do not focus on death at all, rather they focus on life and life in abundance. In writing to the Thessalonians, Paul makes clear that we cannot behave as a people who have no hope.

Death does take away from this life the person who has died, and this results in our missing that person. However, our grief has to be a controlled grief. It has to be a grief subdued by the hope that all who have died in Christ are sure to rise with him. After God has spoken in Jesus, death is seen only as a transition from one kind of life to another. In the words of the sixteenth century poet John Donne: “Death, thou shalt die”.