___CLICK / HEAR AUDIO OF All Souls Day HOMILY and reading of names of deceased__
2021-11-02 _ All Souls Day (Tuesday Nov. 2, 2021)
And, as we might give thanks many times over for a lifetime with a
beloved person, we can also experience sorrow and pain, many times over for
their passing and for their absence from us.
Sometimes this can even be humorous, there can even be some cause
to you know, laugh at ourselves that this happened.
About 6 months or a half a year after my Uncle Joe died, my aunt went to a church social event. I myself was well aware – as were other family members – of my uncle’s death. I was at his funeral.
6 months or so later, there was my aunt trying to renew her
normal activity socializing, though now on our own. The event turned out to be
a moment to cry about with her but also to laugh. After a few hours at this
social event, my aunt felt really sorrowful and sad. And then she went outside
the front doors of the church hall.
And somebody saw that she was sad and was trying to find out what
was the matter. And in her sadness, she tried to explain herself and said, “You
know, I just lost my husband.” And the person said to my aunt, you mean in
there, like just now you just lost him tonight in this building.
My aunt was so frustrated that she left immediately. We did laugh
about this, about the fact that the person who encountered her didn't know what
to say. My aunt was not angry, she just needed to get out of that situation and
go home.
[_02_] We've just read the gospel of the road to Emmaus about the disciples who are headed home, they want to get out of Jerusalem, and all they can focus on right now is the death and dying of Jesus. They are in the initial shock stages. If we go by those, you know, stages of grief, they would be in “DENIAL” right now.
What we read in the Gospel that very day, the first day of the
week two of Jesus's disciples were going to a village seven miles from
Jerusalem called Emmaus and they were conversing about all the things that had
occurred in Jerusalem.
There are 2 disciples in this passage, we read that they're
conversing. They're debating in the course of a 7 mile walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus
that would have taken them about 2 to 3 hours.
So they spent hours debating what has happened at the death of
Jesus in their shock. They've spent several hours trying to get away from all
that has occurred.
And isn't this sometimes what we do with a problem or with a
crisis or sometimes even with the death of a loved one, we debate about what
has occurred and then we try to get away? Maybe we walk several miles or
actually or figuratively just we just try to get away from the situation.
In that encounter my aunt had with somebody was trying to console her
she wouldn't shoot wanted to get away from somebody was trying to help her. The
disciples have covered a significant distance. And it's of course significant
that after all this walking and talking, they do welcome into their company,
another a third traveler, this is Jesus, though they do not recognize him.
It says in the Gospels, Jesus Himself through near and walked with
them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.
At times of difficulty or sorrow, our eyes will fail us, our own
senses will fail us, our own hearing will fail us. Their eyes of the disciples
failed when they didn't recognize Jesus, he was right up there close and
personal.
[Rhetorical Questions]
Do I sometimes fail to recognize the help being offered me or
God's helping offered me so because I don't have my own eyes to rely on, I may
need to rely on the eyes of others?
This is why the grieving process is so healthy and good when it is
includes a communal and collective aspect. Together. We need to help others to
know what we is right in front of us.
Demonstration by accepting an invitation.
What we read is that the disciples on the road urge this unknown
traveler to come in and stay with them. And isn't it a blessing to receive a
visitor to talk to someone just a sympathetic person? At a time of sorrow, we beg such people to
stay with us. They light the way and the demonstration of Jesus.
And there's a demonstration of who Jesus is because he accepts
their invitation. And Jesus does accept your invitation to come into your life
and watch over you and your loved ones. This demonstrates who Jesus is. He wants
to us to invite Him in. Jesus doesn't impose himself on us. And that table in
Luke chapter 24
And at this table at the Liturgy of the Eucharist, Jesus
demonstrates who he is by giving up his body and blood. It's ironic that Jesus
displays who he is by disappearing, and by vanishing is this for our own good.
And this is the demonstration of who
Jesus is.
And the dawning or beginning of
faith for the disciples
Now in the beginning of the gospel, the 2 disciples are troubled because
Jesus has died and gone away, and they don't know what they are assuming he's
simply dead and never coming back.
Now they are rejoicing, yet Jesus has still gone away, he vanishes
from their sight, but they're not troubled this time. Because they trust that
they are going to follow him into eternal life. They start to understand the
gospel, they are rejoicing that he has risen, even though he is not visible to
them.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, asks this question, what is eternal
life? (Reference: Spe Salvi, “Saved In Hope” n. 10)
What is eternity? And do we really want that? Perhaps people reject the
faith, he writes, people perhaps reject Christian faith, because they don't
really feel the prospect of eternal life is all that attractive, or what they understand of eternal life,
because what they desire and admit, sometimes this is what I desire to, I don't
really want eternal life, I want this present life to continue right now. Or in
an even more extreme example, I want to go back in the past and limit some
previous ideal age,
pick, take your pick 19
years old, 56 years old, 26 years old…, whatever that ideal age is, we may want
to go back to where to that place, but on All Souls Day, and really every day,
we remember that we cannot eliminate or postpone death indefinitely.
Not only would this place the earth in a precarious position, but
it's really by accepting death, that we become a new person, that we accept
that we are truly free of this world. In the Beatitudes, we read, Blessed are
they who mourn for they will be comforted. We don't want to simply want to
avoid mourning. But we also need help in order to process our own dying
experience. Pope Benedict writes that our lives are enriched by the
understanding that we are moving towards death
in some way, but we're
also moving towards new life. And so the fact that we're going to die isn't
simply a blind fate or a random act in the future.
But it's a training in
true freedom, a recognition that we're not in charge and that we become a new
person, we become a new person, by dying with Christ and rising to new life.
And in this regard, we we pray that for all of our loved ones, we pray that we
will join them in eternal life as well.
[END]
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