All Souls 2005

All Souls (2005): Wis 3.1-9; Rom 6.3-9; John 6.37-40
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory, Irving, TX

Today we celebrate death! All Souls is a feast eaten to keep always before us the truth of all human life: we will die. There is no uncertainty about this. If we live, we die. A simple truth. For us, Christians, this simple truth is deceptive b/c death is dead. So, perhaps it is better to say that today we celebrate the death of death and our life in Christ right now! The Feast of All Souls is an autumnal Easter.

You do know that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Raising from the water of baptism we are new: clean, freshly washed. A life corrupted by slavery to sin is washed clean in baptism only when that life is snuffed out, killed, if you will, in the death of Christ Jesus. We were crucified with him, buried with him in that empty tomb, and raised from the tomb of cleansing water to live with him again, to live the newness of a life freed from sin. Having spent this life with him, we will be united with him in the resurrection. It is who we are. Paul writes, “If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.”

If our vernal Easter celebrates the resurrection of Christ and our resurrection with him into eternal life, perhaps our autumnal Easter should celebrate our rising into a new earthly life with Christ. What does living in the newness of life mean if we wait until after death to begin living it? We are not called to wait for holiness until the coming of Christ again, we are called to glory in holiness while the coming of Christ is still a promise for us. What is hope but living as if Paradise is here, living the expectation of the Beatific Vision as if we are consumed by the fire of divine beauty now. And what is charity but living as Christ lives in perfect union with the Father’s will to will for others his immeasurable good. And faith, faith is how we ensure that we are not lost to Christ, we who are given to Christ by the Father and willed to be raised on the last day.

If we are dead people who have been absolved of our sins, and if this has been accomplished in the death of Christ with whom we were crucified and buried, then how do we live this truth day to day? What do we do today to celebrate, to make merry about being dead to death and alive to eternity? We can remember that we are Christ’s, meaning, that we must hold in front of us the truth that we belong to another. We cannot allow ourselves to make the basic mistake of postmodern people everywhere and confuse what we Do as citizens with who we Are as Christ’s. We are not what we Do. We are Christ’s. We are not our jobs, our careers. We can celebrate this autumnal Easter by taking seriously the black-line distinction btw who we are as do-er’s and who we are as Christ’s.

What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be Christ’s. I want to be a person dead to sin, dead to death, alive in faith, motivated by hope, and exhausted by charity. I want to be a body-soul who celebrates the death, burial, and rising again of Christ in me. I want to be a person who has seen the Son, believes in Him, and will, after my death here, will rise with him on the last day. I want to be a soul, like all just souls, resting in the hand of God, peaceful, greatly blessed, worthy of his mercy.