The Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed (A – White/Purple)
FIRST READING (2nd Maccabees 12:43-46)
Judas makes atonement for the dead in the form of an expiatory sacrifice knowing that, through this, the dead may be freed from their sins and rise again.
JUDAS, the ruler of Israel, took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he has the resurrection of the dead in view, for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM (Psalm 103)
R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
1 . Merciful and gracious is the LORD, slow to anger, and abounding in kindness. Not according to our sins does he deal with us, nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
2. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him. For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
3. Man’s days are like those of grass; like a flower of the field he blooms; the wind sweeps over him and he is gone, and his place knows him no more.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
4. But the kindness of the LORD is from eternity, to eternity toward those who fear him, and his justice toward children’s children among those who keep his covenant and remember to fulfill his precepts.
R. The Lord is kind and merciful.
SECOND READING (Romans 8:31b-35, 37-39)
Paul assures that no one and nothing can separate us from the love of God because Christ Jesus, who was raised from the dead by the Father, will intercede for us.
BROTHERS AND SISTERS:
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him? Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us. Who will condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?
No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
ALLELUIA (John 3:16)
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
GOSPEL: (Matthew 22:34-40)
JESUS said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.” Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
REFLECTION:
I wrote these verses on a gloomy overcast morning following a night when I celebrated Mass for a dead 44-year-old young doctor who was a professor and mother. She left behind a grieving husband with whom she spent 22 years of marriage, and with whom she bore three sons. We offered the Mass with feelings of loss, and with a lot of questions at heart. Indeed, death is both mysterious and real. We can spend much time speculating and debating about it and about what comes after it, we may discourse on our own biases about it… In the time of Jesus, for example, the afterlife was a great divide among the priests (Sadducees) who did not believe in it, and the lawyers (Pharisees) who taught about it. As such, the Maccabeans–the forerunners of the Pharisees–considered it a noble work to honor the dead with a proper burial (as Tobit had done) and to offer prayers for their eternal peace. In the end, we will all face death and the afterlife, and we will undergo their realness.
The great pain in death is that it makes us see our human limitations in time and space: it seems to finally cut off all our ties of family and friendship. It is very frustrating in this age of connectivity to receive an automated message that says: The person you are calling cannot be reached.” We are aware that with death our loved ones can no longer be reached in the normal way we have experienced the person: with touch, with voice.
Today’s commemoration consoles us in this: our loved ones whom we miss are alive in the Father’s home where, as Jesus teaches (John 14:1-6), there are many rooms. Death is a transition to that real home that Jesus opened up for us by his saving death and resurrection. Also, in the Second Reading, the Apostle Paul writes that in death the gates of God’s mercy and love merited for us by sacrifice of Jesus are most available.
The most important thought, though, that I get from today’s liturgical word is this: Love that is flowing from God is enduring and forever. It binds us to God in a manner greater than anything: greater than death; greater than the boundaries of the past, present, and future. Love therefore says to the beloved ”You live on for me. You are never dead.” Not only our Christian Faith, but our godly love makes us therefore able to say ”I believe in the resurrection of the body and in life everlasting… I believe in the communion of saints.”
Communion of saints, oneness in life with God, is “#Communion_Forever.” Baptized into the Body of Jesus, we are all one: we who are called the “Church militant” or “pilgrim Church” because we continue to live and struggle in this life, those who are already alive in the presence of God as Saints, and those ”suffering souls” in final purification before they join God in his glory. Our Faith has made us all a family under God. Even without physical vision, we all share the goods of prayer, merits of good works, and spiritual offerings since we indeed are just one Mystical Body in Christ. Vatican Council II in Lumen Gentium no. 49 affirms this: ”So it is that the union of wayfarers with the brethren who sleep in the peace of Christ is in no way interrupted, but on the contrary…this union is reinforced by an exchange of spiritual goods.”
Our devotional visits to the graves of loved ones on this day and during the whole month of November, our offerings of flowers and lighted candles, our celebration of Eucharist, rosaries and prayers, are all tokens of our continuing connectedness and not just in memories and ”throwbacks.” Like our cellphones that connect us in a cordless way to one another, ”All Souls’ Day” is our colorful way of declaring that our beloved are alive, and we reach out to them through the spiritual nerves that connect all of us into the One Body in which our Lord Jesus Christ is our Head. It is he who is the firstborn among the dead. This essential thing is ”invisible,” but as the author of the classic book The Little Prince wrote, What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
The Mass Readings and Reflections by Fr. Domie Guzman, SSP are taken from the November 2, 2017 edition of Sambuhay Missalette, printed in the Philippines by St. Paul’s Media Pastoral Ministry.
The Catholic Gospel Digest 