Reading Francis

This isn’t the homily I heard today, but it’s the one I wish I’d heard.

Yesterday was All Saints’ Day, which is a holy day of obligation. We had a big crowd for a weekday mass, we had music, we did all the things. For those of you used to a 30-minute daily mass, it was long. We did all these things to celebrate all the saints, all the people who have run the race and gained the prize, all the people we look up to as examples of what it means to live a life full of Love, given and received. Yesterday we celebrated all the people who, at least by the end of their earthly lives, got the message from God and responded as they could. Some of these saints have their own feast days and are remembered in the life of the Church. Some of them are known only to those close to them, or maybe known only to God. 

Today is All Souls’ Day, which is a regular weekday mass. We’ll be out in 30 minutes, with no music. It’s less of a celebration but every bit as important. It’s the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed. 

If you’re here, at a noonday mass on a Thursday, you have probably lost someone close to you. Grandparents, parents, siblings, friends, maybe a spouse, maybe a child; you’ve lost someone that you love. Me too.

Some of those, you might feel good about putting into the “All Saints” lineup. Even if you squabbled with a sibling or rolled your eyes at a parent or lost patience with a child, you KNOW they are safely in God’s arms, and will fight anyone who tries to tell you otherwise. Which I will not.

But some of those, if we’re honest, we’re less sure about. Maybe we remember their brokenness more than their love. Maybe we know that, while they lived in the moment, they didn’t really trouble themselves with the existential questions. Maybe we have clear memories of the wrongs they did without remorse. We still love them wholly, but we’re not sold, based on the evidence, that they were capital-S saints. We’re not sure they got God’s message.

Today is for them. 

We gather to pray and to celebrate that God loves us more than we could possibly merit. The remembrance of the Eucharist is a reminder to us all that God took the worst we had to offer and loved us anyway.

Anytime we join in this remembrance, we can bring our intentions with us, but, especially today, we bring those people we love who have passed on, but whom we still aren’t sure about. We bring them here with the central Christian virtues of faith, hope and love.

If we didn’t love them, we wouldn’t bring them here. (Though, even if we didn’t, God would still remember them, because God loves them.)

Faith, that God’s love is stronger than human weakness.

And hope, because, like I said, these are the people in our lives that we’ve lost, but aren’t sure about. Today is an opportunity for us to hope publicly that God’s got them, too. And it’s an opportunity to remember that, even if someone we love died in a bad place, spiritually, we just don’t know what merciful tricks God has up his sleeve. 

St. Augustine once said of those who die by suicide, “Between the bridge and the water, the mercy of God can get in.”

Today, let’s remember those we love who need that mercy, and celebrate in faith the hope that God comes through in ways we may not yet understand.