But many of the seminarians knew at least the basic details of the staff member’s personal lives, and we all knew that during our years of formation this woman had suffered a series of tragic events in her family life. Some of these tragedies were terrible accidents, or crises of health that befell members of her family, and sadly, others were acts of violence perpetrated against her loved ones.
But no matter what sad events we knew were going on in her life, whenever you greeted her in the refectory and asked her how she was doing, she would always say – sometimes while looking dejected or choking back tears – “Oh, I’m just blessed.”
Now, don’t get me wrong – in one sense, this is an absolutely true and beautiful statement for a person of faith to make. Whatever tragedies or struggles we may face in our lives, our faith assures us of the fact that, there is never a time when we are not being sustained, protected, and blessed by God, no matter how it might feel in any single moment.
But I have to admit that on another level I found this sort of pious language to be unnatural and unhelpful. Even as a seminarian in my early twenties, I knew that suffering finds everyone at some point in their lives – including through losing loved ones to death – and I knew that these moments definitely don’t feel like moments of blessing.
Then as a priest, you learn very quickly if you didn’t know already, that death is indeed all around us, and that a significant number of people are, at any given moment, feeling the weight of grief, even over deaths that occurred years ago. People are constantly asking priests to pray for a dying or deceased loved one, and there are sick calls to hospitals, and wakes to pray at, and funerals and announced Masses to preside at.
Well, our second reading this evening is one of the readings you most often hear at those funeral Masses. And in it, St. Paul gets to the heart of how we Christians should approach suffering and death – and, at least the way I read it, St. Paul is agreeing with me on this score! (Which I say with knowing irony.)
Paul encourages the Thessalonians: do “not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.” In other words, Paul isn’t telling the Thessalonians not to grieve! Christians can and do grieve. Our faith in the Resurrection does not take away our sorrow and grief in the face of tragedy, suffering, and death, just as Jesus’ trust in His Father did not stop Him from weeping at the death of his friend Lazarus.
But unfortunately, some Christians labor mightily under the misconception that their faith should take away all their grief. They figure if they’re grieving, that must mean that their faith isn’t strong enough. They tell themselves, and others, that they should be “happy” at the death of a loved one because they have “gone to a better place.” They try to act as if everything that happens in their lives should always feel like a blessing and a joy.
But St. Paul doesn’t say that we don’t grieve. He says that we grieve differently: we grieve with hope. That is to say, even in moments of grief, we see past the very real pain and sorrow of the moment, to the horizon of hope that awaits all those who live in the Lord: the ultimate horizon of a Love and Life that conquer all suffering and death.
Brothers and sisters, this past week, with the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls, the Church has begun a month that is dedicated to remembering and praying for our deceased loved ones.
In my former parish in Portland, our sizable community of Mexican American Catholics would erect an Altar of the Dead during November with pictures of the deceased loved ones they wished to remember. And here at Little Flower, and at many other parishes across the country, we have the names of the deceased enrolled in Books of Remembrance or on altars where we offer Mass for their eternal rest.
The Church gives us this season of remembrance because it is so important for us to realize that we have permission, we have even the need, to grieve … but also that we grieve differently than those who do not have Christian hope. We grieve with the certain knowledge that our present sorrow, as real and powerful as it is, does not have the final word and that in the end our sadness will be turned into joy.
We also remember this month that we are obliged not merely to fondly recall our deceased loved ones, but also to pray for them – to remain united with them by offering them the assistance of our prayers, as surely as we prayed for them when they were alive!
In November we make visits to cemeteries, and have Masses said, and offer up other prayers asking God to forgive whatever sins our loved ones may have committed and to welcome them into the joys of Heaven.
Finally, the Church also gives us this Month of the Dead, because even the changes we see all around us in nature, and certainly the themes of all the Gospels we will hear at Mass from now until the end of the Liturgical Year, all remind us that we too will one day die; and that everything we see here in this world, however good they may be, are in fact passing away.
So our first reading, from the Book of Wisdom, and our Gospel from St. Matthew, both give us insight into how we should live in watchfulness and preparation for the Lord’s coming at the moment of our own deaths, and at the end of time.
In the first reading, we are encouraged to “keep vigil” for Wisdom, and we are assured that “whoever watches for Wisdom … shall not be disappointed.” Then in the Gospel we hear the parable of “the ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.” The lesson of this well-known parable is precisely what Jesus says at the end of the reading: we must stay awake, and be watchful and vigilant for we “know neither the day nor the hour” when the Master will return.
So, we might ask: How can the wise virgins be an example for us? What do their lamps, and the oil they have in them signify for us as we attempt to live in expectation of the Bridegroom’s return?
The lamp, like the candle we are given at Baptism, might be said to signify the “flame of faith” that all the children of Light have been given. The oil signifies those things that keep the flame of faith “alive in our hearts:” prayer, the Sacraments, acts of charity, all of the personal virtues that help us develop our life of faith.
And that, in a sense, is why the wise virgins could not give the foolish virgins any of their oil. The life of virtue isn’t something that can simply be given to us by others – we have to obtain the virtues for ourselves. We have to work, day by day, in order to progress in the life of faith and so to be prepared for the moment when we too “go out to meet Him.”
Friends, the month of November and the coming end of the Liturgical Year, give us blessed opportunity to remember our deceased loved ones, to mourn our loss, and to pray for their eternal rest in the “sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.” This time also reminds us of our own deaths, and of the end of time, because how we hope for things to be at the end, should effect how we live, here and now. May this Eucharist we celebrate fortify us as we watch and “wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
(I am grateful to Fr. Drew Gawrych, C.S.C. whose reflections on today's readings were most helpful in preparing this homily.)
