Jesus said to the crowds: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.”
In today’s reading for All Souls Day, Jesus describes to the crowds his intention for all who believe in him, following the will of his Father. When we die we face our particular judgment. Saint Paul puts it this way in the second reading: “If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him.” God prepares a place of everlasting life for all who believe in him and who look to him intently in this life. To look to, from the Greek word theōrōn, means “to discern or intensively acknowledge.” In this life, Jesus invites everyone to look upon him every day with a loving gaze, to behold him, the Son of God so that we may have eternal life. After life on earth, Jesus may call us to further purification in purgatory. As Father Burke Masters says, reflecting on All Souls Day, purgatory is a purification, a way to prepare us to see God face to face with all the saints. Jesus said to the crowds, and he says to me, to all: “I will not reject anyone who comes to me.”
God, help me call to mind today the souls who have gone before me to see you face to face, remembering to pray for them and to ask for their intercession: my parents, my family members and friends of the family, those who have died recently, those dead who are unremembered. The souls of the just, Lord, are in your hand. “They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead,” says the reading from the Book of Wisdom, “But they are in peace.” God, give me the grace to use today as an opportunity to be in communion with them; it is to choose to believe in you rather than in the power of death and that your Son will raise us on the last day. I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. I believe, Lord, in the hope of resurrection; help my unbelief.
God, the souls of the just are in your hand; they are yours. Thank you for your perpetual care of them. Because the day will have a way of turning my attention away from you and obscure my ability to see you, I have the peace of trusting in your mercy and love. Set before me today a means of seeing you in the opportunities and people you present to me, despite what the day demands. Thank you, God, for being present always—stay with me!
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
