THE JOURNEY OF PURIFICATION

ALL SOULS

Wis 3:1-9; Ps 27:1,4,7,8-9,13-14; Rom 5:5-11; Lk 7:11-17

Reconciled by the Death of Christ

Our natural goal or the purpose of our existence is not within nature or reachable through anything we possess, but supernatural to us. We cannot attain the end of our creation unaided; we need divine help to be fulfilled. The sacred scripture testifies to this understanding, for we read God saying in Genesis: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” Therefore, the end of man is to be like God, and the task belongs to God and not to us as such. The first part of the task is entirely God’s, and He achieved it by creating us without us. However, the second part of making us like Him is mainly His, but it needs our cooperation. The cooperation of man was crucial before the original fall, even more so for us sinners. Before the original fall, the cooperation was easy for man, because he was created in grace and enjoyed the presence and glory of God. After the original fall, cooperation is almost impossible without the grace of redemption. Hence, the Church understands that Christ’s grace of redemption extends to all who pleased God throughout the history of salvation, from Abel to the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Enjoying the goodwill of his Father, the Son is the One who holds up anyone who is standing or walking the path of righteousness in obedience to the Father. All prevenient grace, by which we understand the divine will, comes to us through him and with him.

The book of Wisdom testifies to this truth, affirming that the souls of the just are in the hands of God. “The souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God; no torment shall ever touch them. In the eyes of the unwise, they did appear to die, their going looked like a disaster, their leaving us, like annihilation; but they are in peace.” They are truly in the hands of God, for the Word is considered the hands of the Father, who accomplishes all through the Eternal Word. The Word contains the will of the Father and reveals it to men in the prevenient graces. We enter the will of the Father through faith in the word of God. Therefore, our faith in the word of God is what justifies us and makes it possible for God to continue his work and responsibility of making us like Himself. Our likeness to God, therefore, consists in our following the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and his guidance to pattern our lives after that of the Son of Man. Making our lives like the life of Jesus Christ is achieved in love because love is the greatest force that can unite two things into one. Only love can make us one with the Son; hence, love brings us to be like the Son of Man. Love enabled the souls of the just to go through their slight purification, leading to union with the Word. “If they experienced punishment as men see it, their hope was rich with immortality; light was their affliction, great will their blessings be. God has put them to the test and proved them worthy to be with him; he has tested them like gold in a furnace, and accepted them as a holocaust.” Only God can purify us and make us worthy to dwell with him.

The importance of the presence of the Holy Spirit, who is Love, cannot be overemphasised. He makes it possible for us to endure the purification leading to our union with the Eternal Word, as expressed by Saint Paul in the reading from Romans. “Hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.” Faith is necessary to receive prevenient grace and comes with it. But hope is required for the purification to begin and end well. Without hope, we can easily despair on noticing the impossibility of attaining our supernatural goal in God. Hope is considered a constitutive part of the actual grace, which follows the prevenient grace. It is rich with knowledge of God’s redemptive work in the Son of Man for our salvation. “We were still helpless when at his appointed moment Christ died for sinful men. … Having died to make us righteous, is it likely that he would now fail to save us from God’s anger? When we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, we were still enemies; now that we have been reconciled, surely we may count on being saved by the life of his Son?” So, hope rests on a deeper understanding of the mysteries of Jesus Christ at work in us.

The Christian hope has two inlets. First, from faith in the word of God, which proceeds from the prevenient grace of Jesus Christ; Second, and from charity coming from the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. These two inlets correspond to the nature of man; for men to act or do anything, it is required that they be informed in their minds and inflamed in their hearts and wills. Thus, faith in the word of God informs our minds/intellects, and charity emanating from the presence of the Holy Spirit inflames our hearts and motivates our wills to do and hope in God. The coming of the word of God is not separated from the coming of the Holy Spirit, for the word of God is Spirit and life. We witness this in the Gospel, where the works of the Son of Man restore life, give hope, and inflame hearts with love of God. “When the Lord saw her, he felt sorry for her. ‘Do not cry’ he said. Then he went up and put his hand on the bier, and the bearers stood still, and he said, ‘Young man, I tell you to get up.’ And the dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him to his mother.” Our celebration of All Souls is founded on the fact that the purifying work of God on our souls does not end in our temporal life; it extends beyond our mortal existence. The path of purification is a mystical path that the faithful travel into Jesus Christ. It is inaccessible to unbelievers outside time. “There is one thing I ask of the Lord, for this I long, to live in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life, to savour the sweetness of the Lord, to behold his temple.” This is the common hope of the faithful departed. God will not fail to grant this desire and prayer.

Let us pray: Listen kindly to our prayers, O Lord, and, as our faith in your Son, raised from the dead, is deepened, so may our hope of resurrection for your departed servants also find new strength. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.