Have I ever been stranded?

Homily

Solemnity of All Souls

2 November 2025

St. Ann Catholic Church - Prairie Village

AMDG

Have I ever been stranded?  Most of us have.  In this do-it-yourself world where privacy and self-reliance mask as true security, being stranded and not knowing how you're going to get home, or who is going to help you, can be a terrifying experience.  Such is purgatory.  Most of us can relate.  Whether it was an accident, a canceled flight, a storm or natural disaster, or a breakdown, sooner or later, most of us find ourselves stranded, in need of help to survive and make it home.  

You're the good Samaritan in this scenario, at least in today's liturgy of All Souls. Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and let the perpetual light shine upon them.  May they rest in peace.  May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace.

This solemn duty of the Church militant - that's YOU btw - is highlighted today and carries through the end of the liturgical year, as the Church fixes its attention on the eschaton, ultimate things, and the Catholic final four of death, judgement, heaven and hell.  Black vestments are recommended, along with the spiritual maxim to keep death daily before our eyes, so that we may gain wisdom of heart.  What is more, today we resolve as part of our faith, prayer, and holy work, to never forget our beloved dead, and to always offer the best of anything we do that in pleasing to God in union with the saving sacrifice of Christ, to those most in need of his mercy, to the most forgotten soul in purgatory. We do this in union and through the heart of our blessed mother, who received the dead body of Her son from the cross, and prepared the body to return to the dust from which it came.  Her 'pieta' is the symbol of our prayer for All Souls day.

At every funeral Mass we wish our beloved dead to have a safe trip, and to come home safely!  When we ask people to pray for us, and promise to pray for them, we mean it most of all once they have passed from this world.  It's when our beloved ones die that we really start praying for them to have a good trip, and to let them know we're here if they need anything!

Today we solemnly remember that it is a complete waste of time to presume that nice people go to heaven.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The Gospel is just the opposite!  Nice guys always finish last, and the lukewarm are always cast out of the kingdom of heaven, unless they passover in Christ to the fullness of love that constitutes who God is.  Man has just one proper end - to become like God, who is perfect, sacrificial and heroic love.  That passover process must be completed, sooner or later, in every person.  The transformation and divinization of the human person from good to holy is the most dramatic and improbable change of all.  It is only possible through fervent prayer and through fear and trembling!

Again, I say that canonizing nice people is a complete waste of time, and totally misleading.  Of course we live in the hope that God desires each of us to be saved and to lose nothing of what belongs to Christ, but to equate myself with a saint like Maximilian Kolbe, and to pretend there is no substantial difference, is to do the most absurd thing of all. To equate my friends to Mother Teresa, or my family to St. Therese of Lisieux, and to pray like they are close enough and ready instantaneously for heaven, is to truck in nonsense.  

The God of justice and love is too good and too loving to shove us into a new reality that does not correspond to the state of my soul.  Hence purgatory, the doctrine of justice and love and great hope, which is highlighted today and celebrated as a solemn duty and corporal and spiritual work of mercy for the Church militant.

I'm so glad it fall on a Sunday this year, so we can all mark this feast together.  It's not about earning out way to heaven, but praying our way to a worthy participation in the passover mystery of Jesus, a cooperation with the one saving sacrifice that infinitely pleases the father, and a sharing of these graces won by love with our beloved dead, especially the forgotten souls in purgatory most in need of God's mercy.

+mj