Wisdom 3:1–9
Romans 5:5–11
John 6:37–40
Sometimes when people are offering condolences upon hearing of a death, you hear them say, “Sorry for your loss!” That might be a word used when you really do not know the people involved. It at least offers recognition of the situation and feeling. Admittedly, there is on one level a certain ‘loss’ and with it a grieving over that loss. It would seem that even the color of this day would reflect a sense of losing something, a relationship. Yet, from our Christian perspective, understanding the death of a human being primarily as loss is a very limited view of death. It surely does not do justice to the story of Christ.
As we listen to Jesus speaking today, we find a different take on loss or losing someone. From Jesus’ perspective, which is the Father’s perspective, he has come to make it clear that loss is not an operating category for understanding life. The Father’s will is about saving not rejecting. The will of the one who sent me is that I should not lose anything of what he gave me. You and I and all the faithful departed are a gift from the Father to Jesus. His work is to bring us more closely into his life and presence. To understand death primarily as losing someone is to push death into the realm of “its over”, or the relationship is ended. Loss comes close to saying it is the end.
But our faith will not let us stand in that way of thinking for long. Instead of loss, our faith speaks of love and fidelity. Once brought into a relationship with Christ in baptism, that relationship is permanent. We are baptized into Christ’s death, which is his act of loving us to the end. We are baptized into Christ’s very love. That love of us who are weak and frail does not go away in Christ. The disciples thought they would lose Christ when he died. He had to spend an evening telling them that his death was a going into his Father’s love. And his entering into that love was a preparation for their own coming and entering fully into that relationship. So he basically told them not to cry for him. He was going through the door that would seal their relationship forever; eternal life, he called it. And he also made it clear that love is what is binding them altogether. And that love does not break. It is, as the wisdom lover puts it, stronger than death.
Today we remember all the faithful departed. Our family, confreres and benefactors among them, yes. But also all who came to know Christ. We remember them because we love them even now. Our remembrance of them is an assurance that they are not lost but rather they are now among the found. Yes, we are well aware that sin attracted them as it does us. But our belief in Christ also tells us that his love can and does envelop them. Our faith says that they had a share in some way in Christ. And he will not let them go. They may be departed from us but not into emptiness. They departed from us to enter into the space of love and peace that Jesus Christ went ahead to ready for them. Yes, they were frail and weak, but Christ’s love means forgiveness and hope.
Today is a remembrance of love at its best. Wisdom reminds us: “The faithful will abide with him in love. Because grace and mercy are with his holy ones.” Those abiding in love are not lost, not gone. They are alive in us through love; they are alive in God because he is faithful to what he has formed in his image.
~Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB
