A Homily for the Feast of All Souls
Readings: Wisdom 3:1-9 Romans 5:5-11 John 6:37-40
If thus to sleep is sweeter than to wake,
To die were surely sweeter than to live,
Though there be nothing new beneath the sun.
Those are the closing lines of the poem “I dream of you, to wake,” by the British poet Christina Rossetti (1830-94).
Like so many others who have known grief, the dreamer lives again with someone whom death has claimed:
In happy dreams I hold you full in night.
I blush again who waking look so wan.
At night in dreams, the lovers are together again, saying what still needs to be said, seeing again the smiles that once made all the world:
Brighter than the sunniest day that ever shone,
In happy dreams your smile makes day of night.
Thus only in a dream are we at one.
We think of dreams as our escape from the world, though they are seldom that. So often, dreams do the nighttime work of completing those worlds.
We bring our anxieties into dreams and wrestle with them the whole night long. We carry our desires as well, and sometimes we know a delight or two that only dreams can give. So often for those who grieve deeply, the dead live again, if only in the dark.
Thinking of dreams as the uncompleted work of the day is one way to access the mystery of mercy that we celebrate on All Souls Day. We pray for our dead, that God in his mercy will complete the work of salvation begun at their baptism.
Many of us—perhaps most of us—do not live our lives in a way that completely readies us for life with God. Think of God as the fullness of life, love, beauty and truth. Try, though it is impossible, to imagine such fullness and then consider: If you were to die today, do you think you would be ready for what is to come?
Yes, through all your struggles, that is what you sought, but did you ever fully find it, fully open yourself to it?
Having sincerely but only partially sought to be ready for the fullness we call God, would you not hope that God in his mercy would complete the work you have begun? You would not, after death, ask God to begin your life again. You would only want him to make it right, to make it full.
Souls are not sentenced to purgatory. Once having seen the overwhelming beauty and love of God, they desire it. Nor is purgatory some portion of the punishment that is hell. It is the sweet completion of what began under the sun.
The souls of the just are in the hand of God,
and no torment shall touch them (Wis 3:1).
There are so many wrong ideas that can keep us from understanding this mystery of mercy. Purgatory cannot properly be spoken of as a time or a place. We have no idea what those mean on the other side of the grave. Better only to say that it is a process whereby God readies his loved ones. And like all the work of earth, we can aid each other in this activity.
Purgatory is not an example of what some Christians call “works righteousness.” On neither side of the grave do we earn our salvation without the grace of God.
For Christ, while we were still helpless,
died at the appointed time for the ungodly (Rom 5:6).
We do not gain our salvation through any post-mortem process. Souls being readied for God through purgation know that they have been saved by Christ. They are not prisoners awaiting an appeal. No, God has found them worthy yet unready for heaven, for that joyful beauty so far beyond our ken. In mercy, God completes what we began, just as we do in dreams—revisiting our lives, seeing what was not seen before, working out their meaning.
On both sides of death, God’s grace gives what is needed.
The purification of souls after death is akin to a dream. They revisit their lives with God as their guide. He helps them set right what is wrong, complete what is lacking.
Thus only in a dream we give and take
The faith that maketh rich who take or give;
If thus to sleep is sweeter than to wake,
To die were surely sweeter than to live,
Though there be nothing new under the sun.
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