Gospel: Matthew 11:25-30
At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank* you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
Are you weary at times? Do you feel you are carrying heavy burdens? Yes? Me too. It seems to me that carrying burdens is just part of life. When we were younger, our burdens were the worries about school or about our career or about our future. As we get older, we worry about finding a job, getting a place to live, putting food on the table, and paying our bills. When we become parents, we worry about our children – their health, their safety, their future. And as we get still older, and our bodies seem to be wearing out, we worry about our health.
And throughout our journey of life, at different times and in different ways, we worry about death; how we will die, when we will die, and what happens after we die. Those who have no faith may easily think that death is the worst of all evils, because with death they go back to nothingness, to the world of not being. But as Catholics, we look at death with different eyes. We do not see death as the annihilation of our being, but as the gateway to a new way of being and to an existence that goes on forever. We are bodies, rooted in this world, true. But as Catholics, we believe we are more than our bodies. This mysterious capacity within us the Church calls “the soul.”
We believe that at the end of our earthly lives, the soul is breathed out, not into non-being, but into the hands of God. And in this belief we find hope. All Souls Day is a testimony to this hope. A testimony to, as Paul says, the fact that “neither life, nor death … nothing .. can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”
Its a hope that, after the trials of this life are over, we will be found worthy to be in the presence of God. And its a hope and belief that those we have known and loved in this life, and who have died, are now in the loving hands and caring presence of God. That they are in a place where all of life’s questions are now answered, where all worries and concerns have been left behind, and they have awakened into a whole new realm of being.
Its a hope and belief that we too, at some point in this our journey of life, will be in the loving hands and caring presence of God. Its what we celebrate at Mass each Sunday. Its why we come to this place of sanctuary where the powerful and the poor kneel together, and unstoppable time stands still. We come because we are weary of carrying heavy burdens. We come to take His yoke upon us and learn from Him. We come to find rest for our souls. We come to hear – reflect – immerse ourselves in the life of Jesus, our saviour. We come to be with him as he feeds us in preparation of His return to the Father. We come to celebrate his resurrection – and how in that resurrection he has prepared the way for us too to come to know, to love, and at some point in our life’s journey, to be with God forever.
On this Feast of All Souls, let’s pray together for the souls of all the faithful departed…
….We seem to give them back to you, O God, who gave them to us. Yet, as you did not lose them in giving, so we do not lose them by their return. Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only an horizon – and an horizon is nothing except the limit of our sight. Lift us up, strong Son of God, that we might see further; Cleanse our eyes that we might see more clearly; Draw us closer to yourself, that we might know ourselves to be nearer to our loved ones, who are with you. Amen