This Sunday our Church celebrates a feast known as All Souls Day. In the Ordo (the daily Mass Calendar) the day is named as ‘Commemoration of the Faithful Departed.’It is a day when we remember with devotion those who have died.
It is common for us to remember family members and close friends.
Many include a visit to the grave side of the person(s) being remembered.
“Human beings have always cared for their dead and sought to give them a sort of second life through attention, care and affection, In a way, we want to preserve their experience of life; and paradoxically by looking at their graves, before which countless memories return, we remember how they lived, what they loved, what they feared, what they hoped for and what they hated, They are almost a mirror of their world.” —Pope Benedict XVI. All Souls Day 2011
Margaret Alington in her book Unquiet Earth evokes the barrenness of the Karori Cemetery at that time. “In the midst of the vast acres of rough hillside, the ground was first broken to receive the tiny body. [His remains] lay in isolation on the windy slopes for six months before the next burial.” There was no marker or headstone on Fish’s grave until a plaque was placed at the centenary of the cemetery in 1991.
In the Eucharistic Prayer used by the presider at our Eucharist there is a prayer remembering the dead.
The presider prays, “Remember also our brothers and sisters who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection and all who have died in your mercy: welcome them into the light of your face.”
While the presider prays the pray aloud and alone, the Eucharistic Prayer is, in fact, the prayer of the community.
As the presider I am frequently caught up by the phrase, “And all who have died in your mercy.”
Interiorly, I find myself asking, ‘who doesn’t die in the mercy of our God? Whom would God exclude?
The choice to include or exclude belongs to God!
It can be worth recalling the ‘names’ we have for our God; all loving, all merciful, all compassionate, all forgiving, all redemptive.
Would this all loving, merciful, compassionate, forgiving, redemptive God exclude anyone?
The exclusion is of our doing not, I suggest, of God’s doing!
Here is a suggestion: if you visit the cemetery this All Souls Day, take a moment to stop in front of an old, well worn grave, a grave that maybe somewhat overgrown by grass, brambles, or other sort of vegetation and pause for a moment and offer a prayer for the person whose remains lie there and whose grave is a memory of a life lived, of a life lived and died in the merciful embrace of God.