2/11 Sunday - The Commemoration of All
the Faithful Departed
(All Souls)
First Reading Job 19,1.23-27 Is 25,6.7-9 Wis 3,1-9
Psalm Ps 26 Ps 24 Ps 41
Second Reading Rom 5,5-11 Rom 8,14-23 Rev 21,1-5. 6-7
Gospel Jn 6,37-40 Mt 25,31-46 Mt 5,1-12
Today we come to God celebrating the memory of all those who have come to end
of the pilgrimage here on earth: we put them in his hands, we trust them for
his mercy, and we intercede for their salvation. Yesterday we contemplated our
brothers and sisters in glory, those who served the Lord faithfully and have
been of example to us. Today we offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice for the faithful,
who even though they shared the faith of the Church, they died still selfish,
proud, having bad wishful thoughts, having lived lukewarm their hope and love,
indifferent to the Word of God. We are to find ourselves amongst them. Even
we, after we die, we would need the prayer of all the Church, and God will listen
to her prayer and will free us from that place or that time in which our purification
is to be completed, so that we can enter and form part of the faithful servants
of God in glory.
Today we have several readings, each of every Mass that the priests can celebrate,
if there are a good number of persons that partake in. All the reading would
underline the faith in a life with God after death. It is only a passage from
the present condition that we know, to another condition that we don't know
yet, but that it is in God's hands. Jesus came, preached, suffered, died and
was raised from the death so that we can be prepared to this passage, so that
we can be made ready to be embraced by the Father who is waiting for us.
In the Gospel of the first Mass Jesus shows us the will of the Father: we to
get hold of him, the savior, the Son of God; he will not allow that we go lost,
indeed will give eternal life to us with the certainty of the resurrection that
is to participate in his glorious life!
The gospel of the second Mass wants to help us in our relationships with the
persons who are around us, all in varied ways of suffering: our eyes must be
opened because our hands catch up the needs of who are in the pain therefore
that can experience the mercy of the Father and know his tenderness.
The gospel of the third Mass proposes to us again the beatitudes, as the description
of the place within which every Christian and all the Church lives and moves.
We pray for our beloved departed, who only partially rendered their own life's
desire of God visible, who wants to see to us more attached to him instead to
the things of the world and to the ambitions and passions. We put ourselves
with greater decision on this road, in a way that our commitment supports the
prayer, that it becomes therefore accepted by the Father.
In the first two Masses the apostle Paul helps to take seriously the fact of
being sons and daughters of God. We are children thanks to the Son Jesus Christ,
and therefore we consider the suffering of the present time, including those
that bring death, not like misfortunes, but like concrete ways to participate
to those lived by the same Son, offering them to him. The death of the Son has
been the price of our reconciliation, and therefore in the design of God also
our suffering will be precious for us and for the entire Church!
Even the Writings of the prophets, with great decision and joy, help us to remain
strong in the faith of the future life, the life "of the world that will
come" (Creed). Job says: "After that this skin will be torn away,
without my flesh, I will see God. I will see him, I myself; my eyes will contemplate
him and not an other one"! And Isaia: "He will eliminate death for
ever… Here is our God in him we have put our hope...we rejoice for his salvation"!
At last the book of the Wisdom reassures us: "To the eyes of the unwise
it seemed that they died, their end was thought to be a disaster, their departure
from us a ruin, but they are in the peace"!
We pray therefore with faith and love for our departed beloved. We ask God the
Father to forgive them also those eventual sins that we don't normally succeed
to pardon, because Jesus died also for those. And we renew our commitment for
living the Word of Jesus, so that our life be to effective to the prayer of
all the Church.