St. Mary Parish, Manchester at 210 West Main Street, Manchester, MI 48158 US - Homily for All Souls Day (Nov. 2, 2008)

All the Faithful Departed
(All Souls Day)
Readings: Wisdom 3: 1-9; Romans 5: 5-11; John 6: 37-40
2 November 2008

On November 1, the Church celebrated the great festival of all the saints, those men, women and children who now share in the glory of the risen Lord. The solemnity of All Saints is the yearly victory celebration in which the Church honors these faithful souls who triumphed over their own sinfulness and attained total detachment from the world and its allurements by imitating Christ.

Their victory is the result of a lifelong desire and struggle to attain personal holiness in order to share in the fruits of the resurrection. The saints, while living on earth never lost sight of their eternal destiny, they lived their lives striving to enter through the narrow gate, which is the only way to salvation.

The memorial that we celebrate today, All Souls Day, has a more somber tone then that of All Saints Day. Today the Church in her sacred liturgy points her children in a very important direction, the direction of death, judgment, heaven, hell, and purgatory. These are spiritual realities that are the destiny of each and every one of us; realities that I would dare say the majority of us avoid reflecting upon like we would avoid the plague.

But not thinking about these things and denying their existence should frighten us even more. Living in a highly secular world, a world that denies the existence of eternal truths, a world that has no sense of the transcendent, it is easy for those of us who claim to be followers of Christ to take on more of a secular view of death than a Catholic view of it.

A recent Beliefnet.com survey asked Catholics, “When you die, what do you think will probably happen?” Of the approximately 1,400 respondents,

·       50.9 percent answered, “I will go to heaven”

·       16.3 percent said, “I will go to purgatory”

·       0.4 percent said, “I will go to hell”

·       4.2 percent said, “I will be reincarnated”

·       22.5 percent said, “I will leave my body and return to a source of divine consciousness”

·       5.8 percent answered, “Other.”

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at such responses. It reflects a frightening decline in knowledge of the true faith and our eternal destiny.

The Catholic faith teaches us that only saints can go directly to heaven. I can only speak for myself, but I know that I am far from sainthood. From the earliest days of Christianity, the Church has taught, “All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven” (Catechism of the Catholic Church n. 1030). This teaching is based on the practice of prayers for the dead found in Sacred Scripture: “From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God” (CCC, n. 1032).

Today’s memorial reminds of an important spiritual work of mercy that every single one of us is called to perform; that is praying for the souls of the faithful departed. I recently attended the funeral of a mother of a priest and the priest that gave the homily (it was not her son) declared that this woman was in heaven. I was amazed at what I heard, for according to what the priest said of her, she appeared to be the second Immaculate Conception, free from all taint of sin and assumed into heaven upon her death.

I was looking around to see where Pope Benedict XVI was because as far as I know only the Holy Father can canonize a saint, this on the recommendation of the Congregation of Saints and following after years of investigation into the person’s life as well as two miracles attributed to their intercession. It is no wonder why that many Catholic people no longer pray for the dead because at many a Funeral Mass they have been informed that their deceased loved one is already in heaven. This erroneous teaching leads to the false impression that we do not have to do anything to attain heaven, so it doesn’t matter how we live our lives. We can even adopt what I call an entitlement mentality when it comes to heaven; that God owes me heaven.

Today’s solemn memorial of the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed reminds us that we must never cease to pray for the souls of all the dead. We must also stop canonizing the dead. We must also stop thinking that to say that a soul might be in purgatory is somehow offensive or uncharitable. It is not. While only God has knowledge of where a soul goes upon death I would dare say that the souls of the majority of Catholic people who die these days will end up in purgatory.

How can I say this? Because I do not see great numbers of people seeking to purify their souls in this life through performing acts of penance, through practicing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy or through fidelity to the monthly confession of their sins in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.

My dear friends in Christ, if we want to go to heaven we must strive for holiness and for detachment from sin in this life, if not we will find ourselves in purgatory at best, at best. Let me tell you that purgatory is no day at the fair either; it is a most painful spiritual process. The flames of purgatory are flames of purification; they are the flames of the intense love of God purifying the soul from the ego, burning off from it all the I,I,I, and the me, me, me that were the obsession of our life. Yet the flames of purgatory are also hopeful flames for they eventually will lead the soul to the glory heaven. The flames of purgatory differ greatly from the flames of hell for the flames of hell are the eternal flames of punishment that will never cease to torture.

Now some of you might be thinking that my intention is to frighten people, and that this homily is my attempt at giving you a belated Halloween scare. Certainly my desire is to stir up in all of us a healthy fear of judgment. But more than anything, as your pastor entrusted with your spiritual care, I desire that each and every one of us to go to heaven and I am simply pointing out the way as is taught by our holy Catholic faith.

The other day when I went to confession for my penance my confessor asked me to choose a chapter from the classical spiritual work titled The Imitation of Christ. The chapters in The Imitation of Christ are usually brief, only a page or two, but they are densely packed with spiritual wisdom. So I chose chapter 23, which is called Mediation on Death. In closing this homily I would like to share with you a few sections of this chapter for our further reflection:

“The Hour of death will soon come for you. See to it that you spend your time here well. There is a common saying that a man is here today and gone tomorrow. And once he is out of sight, he is soon forgotten.

How dull we are and hard of heart, for we think only of the present and make little provision for the life hereafter! If you were wise, you would so order your life as though you were to die before the day is over.

If your conscience were clear, you would not be afraid of death. Better to give up sin than to fear death. If you are unprepared to face death today, how will you be tomorrow? Tomorrow is uncertain and you may not be here to see it.”

Amen.