Richard Bollman, S.J.

SCRIPTURE, November 2 (31^st Sunday) 2008

"Praying with the Holy Souls"

It’s that day of the Holy Souls–

the ones who have left this world, no longer in the body,

but moving in transition to the resurrection.

And so we reach out in prayer, in wonder, and in hope for them.

Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.

Comment on the scriptures

The reading from Wisdom this morning,

just a bit more extended than what you might hear at a funeral,

speaks of the gradual nature of our transition from death to the next life,

how it is experienced in hope, in a proving time,

like anything precious is proved and claimed only gradually.

This seems to refer not only to the testing time that life itself is for us,

but also to a suggestion of a purgation after death.

The Letter to the Thessalonians contains a direct comment of Paul

about one of the early questions of the community:

since, as they believed, we shall be all encounter the Lord’s second coming

in our own lifetime,

will those who die early, before he comes, be at any disadvantage?

Will they still meet him too?

Here too there is a suggestion that the dead move on to a place

where they, like the living, must await the resurrection.

And we shall all be together in it.

The Gospel passage from Matthew comes from the liturgy of All Souls,

about the revelation of God that is reserved for even ourselves,

we who are basically children in these matters of spiritual knowledge.

HOMILY

The prayers of this day are made for the sake of the souls who are holy,

and who are in transition,

who are moving toward a full and new life.

We are praying for their reintegration as embodied spirits, full persons.

That what we say in our philosophy of the human:

we are spirit beings who essentially express and live life in the body,

the body is essential to our souls: this is Aquinas actually.

So the resurrection is important to our being whole and complete.

Risen Bodies.

This possibility is something we only know by the story of Jesus,

the first born of our human condition in the next life.

A splendid future we have. And we have always believed

we may not be wholly ready for it just at the moment of death,

so prayer for one another in the transition, however it goes on

is appropriate. How do we do that kind of prayer?

My mother’s observance, the traditional Catholic observance,

was to help the Souls by visiting a church on November 2.

Pay a visit and say 6 Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s, Glory Be’s;

and a soul is released into the full light of heaven.

A visit can be repeated at the same church through a different door:

Mom found 6 doors in the Church of St. Clement.

I remember her confidence, her focus on this day.

It’s like she lived in a bigger world, not just local, not just present,

but part of the past and part of the future

with the people who mattered to her, lots of whom I didn’t know.

That was her preferred way. That’s how she reached out.

I find myself hoping someone will do the same for me.

In the Philippines this is a national holiday, November 2.

Families go to cemeteries, even for the whole day: with picnic lunches.

Traffic is in snarls all around.

In Mexico there are public processions and special foods.

So it’s not always a matter of special prayers,

though probably prayers are said over the food.

But the essence is remembering the dead, favoring their memory,

holding up their goodness and their stories, their weakness too.

That’s what it’s like to speak of them.

Once on retreat a Milford, an eight day communal retreat

conducted by one of our theology teachers,

We’d take time each evening for some communal dialogue.

One evening, after we had spent the day with these pervasive concerns,

how we live, how we die,

he encouraged us to follow him to the graveyard on the hill,

where chairs had been brought out.

We formed a circle among the graves,

some of them rather fresh, and simply began to say what we felt,

what moved us, what we prayed for.

Sharing time with the dead, that’s what it is;

because they are close to us, we’re a part of life together.

It’s an expansive viewpoint, sacred and very human.

I begin to ask myself, when I visit a cemetery,

maybe to take a little food along, to spend some time,

to let my interest in my family and friends, some of the parish here,

all in the same cemetery, to sustain myself with a little food,

while I sustain their journey, their memory,

just being present.

Or even without going to the cemetery, prayer for the dead

could be opening a photograph album, on this day of prayer,

getting close to their changes through the years,

and now this eventful change they are living through.

You don’t need a detailed way to pray; it’s just being present.

Being present to the living and the dead, and to God,

What do we really know of death? Only the dead know for sure.

But we do know and proclaim this:

that life has not ended, it has rather changed.

Is this change a slow process? Is it in an instant, the sound of a trumpet?

This day of prayer for the Holy Souls

suggests that it may be, indeed, a gradual process, a transition,

and it’s good to remember our friends who are in transition.

Because transitions are hard.

And this brings me to speak about the living. About ourselves.

Because transition is a fact of everybody’s life.

You go along in life and everything flows, it all matches up,

and then one day you find yourself in between.

It can be as vivid as losing your job, and there you are in between:

in between pay checks, in between cities maybe.

Or you witness the death of a spouse, a family member.

You may be in between relationships, or marriages even,

or like our Church, I think,

in transition between old ways of thinking and governing,

and something new, which is not yet seen.

And that’s the stress of it, you don’t know what might come, or when.

It is a Purgatory time.

It is always a work of grace, a time with God, it demands respect.

We can’t manipulate it, we can’t force it along.

In other words, transition is not like crossing the street.

You look both ways, you make a dash for it, it’s over.

We’re not between curbstones, we are between dreams.

A kind of gap opens up in our life, with opposition and fear

and new strange silences, and there is not any time schedule.

We go through a little death. We need the help of people hoping for us,

praying alongside, as we find our way.

So don’t rush through this day of the Souls.

God is at work. You know it as you enter or leave a cemetery,

there is no other explanation for all this unfinished life,

all this dust that remains and the unknown integration happening.

Christ has said, I do not want to lose anyone who has been given to me.

Let us pray for one another in our changes, in the gap, the silent places.

And let us pray for all the souls who need the assistance

of our faith.