Today is All Soul’s Day.
It’s an odd time this weekend in our Church. All Saint’s fell on a Saturday so it wasn’t anything more than a weekday Mass that happened to be a holy day. All Soul’s fell today, on a Sunday, so it was muted as well. I guess some of the churches had a regular All Soul’s Mass on Saturday afternoon, as a vigil Mass.
On top of that it is the first day of standard time for those of you who celebrate.
November marks a time in the life of the Church where we pay more attention to the end of things than usual. Our readings talk about the end and we prepare for Advent, one focus of which is the end of the world when Jesus will return.
All of this makes it a good time to consider our own ends as well as that of those we love. Wednesday night in OCIA our pastor talked about the Last Things too. Memento Mori, the Latin that means to remember our death, is a common phrase we see this time of year too.
It doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom though. Considering death can help us see what needs to change before we die. How we need to grow closer to God and others. A little like Lent, where we see our sins more clearly and take actions to change while we still can. Lent ends in the joy of Easter while Advent ends in the joy of Christmas. Maybe remembering we will die will help us to focus on the right things as we lead up to Christmas less than two months from now.
Like Lent, this focus on death that begins in November and Advent to follow is an opportunity for us to get our priorities straight and fix what needs to be fixed in our hearts and relationships so we can celebrate Christmas well and be prepared for the possibility of our own death should we be called to it along the way.
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
I hope you have a great week.
Peace, Bob
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