All Souls 2005

"Let us allow the sacred rituals of our faith which bring us face-to-face with Christ’s triumph over death,
to lift our hearts even as they anoint our troubled spirits."

It is good for us to be together and to pray together on this Feast of All Souls. Each of us has had personal encounters with death this past year – a parent, a spouse, a child, a loved one, a friend, a neighbor. We have been saddened and diminished by our losses and we seek comfort and solace. May our prayer this evening remind us that we are never alone in our grief.

Our world and our nation have experienced death this past year, too – on a scale that is both chilling and sobering. Iraq has been both battleground and burial ground for too many of our youngest and finest, and too many of their youngest and finest. And, of course, Iraq is far from being the only place in our world where warfare has daily taken its grim toll. Far from it.

And then there is the terrible toll of the catastrophic hurricanes that hit our gulf coast. Those savage storms swept away over a thousand lives with what can only be called a “preferential option” for the lives of poor people, old people, black people, sick people.

But terrible as the death toll of those hurricanes was, it paled by comparison with the wholesale devastation of the earthquake that rocked parts of south Asia last month. Once again, it was largely the poorest of the poor who were buried under the rubble of collapsed villages or swallowed alive by great avalanches of earth.

Where was God in all of this, many asked? And it was a fair question – even thought it admitted of no easy answer. In pondering that question myself, I found myself taken by the idea of one thoughtful writer who suggested that perhaps our mistake in asking ‘the God question’ the way we always do is rooted in an error about what it means to say that God is all-powerful. “Perhaps,” the writer said, “perhaps in choosing to create, God also chose to limit the divine power in ways we do not understand – because certainly the God portrayed by Jesus was not all-powerful – he ‘emptied himself,’ taking on the human condition, he was tortured and crucified, and he hung on the cross in solidarity with all those who suffer unjustly.”

Not a solution to the problem of evil, certainly, but a tiny window onto it, perhaps.

I was also taken by another thought: alongside the problem of evil, there is the mystery of love. And there surely was an immense outpouring of love and pure human goodness in the wake of all the recent disasters. The very best in human nature showed itself: bitter tears of grief flowed together with sweet tears of love. And so while the believer is faced with trying to explain the problem of evil, the unbeliever is faced with trying to explain the mystery of love….

Among the three scriptural readings, the reading from the Book of Lamentations may best reflect our mood this night and the mood of our world. “My soul is deprived of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is; I tell myself that my future is lost, all that I hoped for from the Lord.” But the reading does not end there – and neither can our thoughts and struggles, because in the midst of incalculable loss the great poem dares to go on to speak of hope: “The favors of the Lord are not exhausted, God’s mercies are not spent; they are renewed each morning, so great is God’s faithfulness.”

In past years at this Mass I have spoken about making friends with death. St. Francis of Assisi was my inspiration for that with his “Sister Death,” and so was St. Paul who “longed to be dissolved and to be with Christ,” and who eagerly awaited what “eye hath not seen nor ear heard.” This year, in light of all the violent and sudden loss of life, it seems more difficult to speak this way but speak it we must, and Gabriel Faure’s gentle meditation on death helps us do so. Its moments of serene calm as well as its sublime hosannas bring us into a quiet harbor where a gentle God offers peace, consolation, rest.

So, my friends, let us continue our prayer, remembering with sadness –- but also with gratitude -- all who have died. And let us allow the sacred rituals of our faith which bring us face-to-face with Christ’s triumph over death, to lift our hearts even as they anoint our troubled spirits.