November 2, 2014
by Deacon Mark Arnold
For many of us, All Souls Day can be a difficult. The reason is quite simple. Nearly all of us have lost someone dear to us. Maybe it was many years ago, maybe only a few months or maybe even more recent than that. The last thing we need is another day to have to grieve for our loved ones who have died. After all, we already have to struggle with our sorrow on birthdays and anniversaries. Those are tough enough. Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day and other holidays don’t help much either. Some of us really can’t “celebrate” if we instead find ourselves recalling the “good old days,” those times when our loved ones were still here with us. So All Souls Day can be one more reminder of how much we miss a wife, a husband, a parent, a sibling, a child. All Souls Day is a day to be sad, right?
There is no question that the pain of the loss of a loved one rarely, if ever, goes away. Many years may go by, and yet the sorrow still remains. Oh, we may deal with it a little better and a little more easily as time goes by, but for some of us, it’s always there in the background, chipping away at our happiness, at our peace, at our joy. Why couldn’t things have been different? Why does it have to be this way? Why couldn’t I have gone first? Why? Why? Why? Those are very natural questions to ask and we shouldn’t feel bad asking them. God wants us to cry out to him with all of our emotions, the joy and the sorrow, the blessing and the loss. It shows a great deal of faith to ask God such profound questions.
Sadness is not at the heart of this day nor is loss or disappointment or regret or any negative thing. No, today, All Souls Day, is a day to simply rejoice in God’s great love and mercy. God loves every single one of us completely, unconditionally, relentlessly, and for all time. That means that he loves our departed friends and relatives even more than we do. Imagine that. For some of us that is unimaginable. Who loves our mom or husband or daughter or friend more than we do? God does. He loves us too, just as much and understands the pain and sorrow we are feeling, understands what we are going through. That’s a reason to have a great deal of hope, not a “fingers-crossed” kind of hope but a hope which leads to peace, a profound peace that comes from realizing just how incredible our God is.
Today is a day to give thanks to God: Father, Son, and Spirit, for our loved ones who have gone before us. We needn’t feel that we have to have a false image of them, an idolized picture of who they were. I know that’s a temptation and can be a kind of comfort to us. However, the truth is that God loves them as they are, with their strengths and goodness and kindness, but also with their shortcomings and imperfections.
In fact, God even is willing to embrace them in their sin. After all, he died so that every single person in every time and place could be reconciled, those who got many things right in this life, and those who stumbled again and again and again. His love triumphs over sin and death itself.
Today is a day to feel deeply in our hearts that everything is going to be ok, actually better than ok, more beautiful and peaceful than we could ever imagine, for our loved ones, but also for us too. God doesn’t want the death of loved ones to be the spiritual death of those who are grieving. He wants to raise us up, lift us from our sorrows to a place of peace and comfort. Today we pray for the grace to understand deeply that better days are ahead for us. Our loved ones are in the best of hands. And so are we. Everything will ultimately be ok. Our grief will not win. God will.
Today is a day to recognize that the bonds we forge on earth are not broken by death. Our love continues beyond this earthly life. We still love those who have gone before us and they still love us. Those connections still exist, not in our minds, but in a very real, very deep, eternal way. If you wish that your loved ones were still here with you, they are. They haven’t gone away, nor have the bonds between us been severed. In some ways, maybe they are very present to us. It’s not easy to see or understand certainly but faith helps give us a glimpse into that reality.
Today is certainly a day to pray for our loved ones and for all men and women who have died, asking our loving God to embrace them for all eternity, to give them a seat at the heavenly banquet. We shouldn’t spend any time trying to “figure it out”. None of that really matters. What’s important is simply to pray for them because that’s what we do as Catholics, that’s who we are, people of faith, who pray for and care for one another, in this life and in the next. Don’t forget to ask for their prayers too. What could be more beautiful? We are praying for them and they are praying for us.
So today, my friends, is a day to be filled with a tremendous amount of hope. Hope that our loved ones are being cared for. Hope that God will continue to be with us, comforting us and sustaining us in our grief. Hope that assures us that we will be right along shortly, in God’s time, reunited with all those we long to see, all those who have meant so much to us during this journey we call life.
All Souls Day, a sad one? Perhaps? A hopeful one? No doubt about it.
Thank you God for loving the people I have loved and everyone else too.
