Occasion: Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls’ Day)

"Since our departed brothers and sisters believed in the mystery of the Resurrection," one of the prayers in the Mass for this day says, "let them share the joys and blessings of the life to come." These words say much about why we gather to pray today. We remember that those who have gone before us believed, and we remember what they believed in—eternal life. We ask God to welcome them into that life.

Of course when we remember the dead we think first of our departed loved ones and friends. And we enlarge the circle to take in all Christians who have died. All the faithful departed: That is the name of today's feast. Scripture tells us the Jewish community was praying for the departed 200 years before Christ, and the earliest Christians prayed for their dead from almost the very beginning. This feast has been around for a long time, too, dating in one form or another from over 1,000 years ago. That history testifies to the human need to ask for a safe passage for the dead as they enter on their final journey to be with God forever.

The church also calls today a commemoration, a call to remember. Remembering, though, can mean a lot more than only bringing someone or something to mind. When Christians remember, unexpected and powerful things happen. When Christians remember, they reach into the past and bring it into the present. That's what happens in the Eucharist: The real presence of Christ comes into the present and shines its light into the future.

The church also calls today a commemoration, a call to remember.

When we pray for the departed, then, we are helping to make real our hope in eternal life—a hope begun in Christ, proclaimed in the gospel, raised with him, and living forever. In Jesus "who rose from the dead," we pray in the Mass, "our hope of resurrection dawned." Yesterday was the Solemnity of All Saints, which celebrated the connection between those in heaven and on earth. These two days taken together bear a powerful message: The risen Jesus is the hope of the deadand the living. Whether on our earthly pilgrimage or already beyond it, we are drawn into the love of God.

Beyond the faithful departed, though, we can widen our circle of prayer even further and pray as well for all who have died, especially those who met death violently, alone, or without faith. When in 1915 the pope established today's feast for the whole church, he had in mind the carnage of the First World War. Surely today our prayers should include the victims of wars, famines, epidemics, that the solace and presence of God they may have lacked at death is theirs now. We might even consider a prayer for those who have hurt us, who very much need prayers. "Pray for those who persecute you," Jesus taught in the gospels. We can offer prayers of action as well. Can you sow peace where there is conflict, love where there is hate, generosity where there is self-centeredness, hope where there is despair, healing where there is hurt?

When the theologian Karl Rahner reached his 80th birthday, he was asked to reflect on that milestone. "Eighty years is a long time," he said. "But for all of us the lifetime assigned to us is the short moment in which what is meant to be comes to be." To live in communion with God and one another—both the living and the dead, who are really the eternally living: That is what our lives are meant to be, and if we live that way, it will come to be.