All Souls’ Day ~ year C
Spiritual Reflection
And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. Jn 6:38
In each stage, life offers us different types of learning through whatever we experience. The passage from one stage to another is not without suffering. “There is no love from which we are not bruised,” said the poet Aragon. Each step brings its crisis and its mourning to live. So it is the same for this step which leads us to the process that we call dying.
Saint Augustine affirms:
When a human being is born, there are many assumptions: perhaps he will be beautiful, perhaps he will be plain; perhaps he will be rich, perhaps he will be poor; perhaps he will have a long life, perhaps not…But it can be said of no one: perhaps he will die, perhaps he will not die. Death is the only absolutely sure thing in life. What difference does it make whether it takes a little longer or a little shorter time?
Death is simultaneously the most certain and the most uncertain thing. What is quite certain is the fact that it will happen; what is uncertain is the moment when it will happen. At each instant of our lives, we experience, under different forms, this act of dying. We need detachment. All these changes, the mourning we must endure, will lead us gradually to dispossession from both family and friends: to be pulled out from an environment, to have to change a relationship, to renounce a certain function. All these events can make us grow or close us in on ourselves. We have a choice.
Death is present in my life through all the failures that I have experienced, all the illusions that I have entertained, the defeats that have thwarted my will. Time passes that I cannot get back and constantly reminds me that a limit is fixed for my present activity. To exist as a person and to live requires multiple renunciations and disappropriations, while all withdrawal into myself, all tension over my past, over my wealth, all vain bitterness over what could have been, risk preventing me from living and becoming more. My life is a Paschal Mystery of death and resurrection, losses and gains, of living and dying. This constant movement from death to life, from loss of possessing to victory of being, from disappropriation to attainment of personhood, imposes itself, it seems to me, as the law of personal existence. This is why, each time I consider the eventuality of my death, in whatever manner I still am not aware of, and that I consent to this death by continuing with my previous choices – which must give new birth to the creature that I am in the hands of a Father who invites me to love him – I deliberately achieve my vocation as a son or daughter of the Father like Jesus Christ, his firstborn Son. “I lay down my life in order to take it up again” (Jn 10:17).
Death is the opportunity to take off all the masks. This is the real challenge that is offered to me: in the last act of my earthly life, will I identify as the one who, so often, gave himself the illusion of playing his persona alone, and acquiring alone and by himself his earthly securities?...Will I remain a prisoner of my “idealized image” and lock myself in my ego? Or, will I finally become who I am? Will I, like Christ, recognize my true personality as this child of God that I am, who is returning to his Father – who perhaps returns from afar at a painful but willingly accepted cost – leaving behind all his attempts to be admired, to play hard, and to pose in front of God as an independent subject? A choice is given to me: to refuse to abandon myself and to harden myself or, by asking forgiveness, to throw myself into the arms of the Father in a final act of trust, knowing that the Father’s love is greater than my faults and that I cannot lose it. Therefore I live Easter and I pass to the Father with Jesus, who takes me into his death to revive me with him.
You have to learn to depart, to leave. This sentence of Jesus leaving his disciples has a universal meaning: “It is better for you that I go.” Besides, do we not die throughout our life? We are always taking leave of someone. We are constantly departing. These partial deaths occurring in our lifetime help us to consent to our last breath and to that of our loved ones. In the measure that we have learned to accept these partial deaths in our daily life, it will be easier for us to accept the departure of those who are dear to us, and to live our own dying as the last stage of growth in life. André Daigneault, The Long Journey toward Serenity, pp. 187-189
References from the Catechism of the Catholic Church
1021 Death puts an end to human life as the time open to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ. 592
1023 Those who die in God's grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ. They are like God for ever, for they "see him as he is," face to face. 598
1025 To live in heaven is "to be with Christ." The elect live "in Christ," 600 but they retain, or rather find, their true identity, their own name. 601 For life is to be with Christ; where Christ is, there is life, there is the kingdom. 602
Questions for Reflection
1. What thoughts do I have about the end of my earthly life?
2. What is my perception of eternal life?
3. To what is the Lord calling me by this reflection and how do I attempt to respond?
Prayer after Sharing
Thank you, God, for allowing me to see the truth about my weaknesses and how it calls upon the abyss of your merciful Love.
