The
Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed
All
Souls Day
November 2, 2015 8:30am
A Grave Marker
Some time ago, I read about a
grave marker in a cemetery in Maine.
This marker goes back to the
1700’s. The inscription on this marker,
for a man who had died, is simple but it makes us think.
It says:
“We seem to give him back to thee,
Dear Lord who gave him to us,
Yet as thou who didst not lose him in giving,
So too, we have not lost him by his return to you.”
We Do Not Lose Them
They are consoling and even
insightful words.
Today, All Souls Day, we
recognize that we have given back to God some of our loved ones, much as God had
given them to us. So maybe we have given
back to God our grandparents, our parents, your husband or wife, a brother or sister,
a friend, a son or daughter, and on it goes.
The loss, the giving back to God
has been painful. It has left a void, a
vacuum in our lives.
And yet, as persons of faith, we
know that God did not lose us in giving us to our loved ones. God has remained with us and we have remained
close to God while we are here on earth.
In a similar way, we have given
some of our loved ones back to God. But,
our faith tells us that we also have not lost them.
They remain our loved ones and
our relationship with them continues. This
is part of what we mean by our belief in the Communion of Saints.
The Communion of Saints
We believe that we can still help
one another.
We know that we have the
potential here on earth to bring joy or sadness to one another. So, we can affect one another spiritually
here on earth.
We believe that we can also affect
one another spiritually after one of us has gone back to God. So today, we pray for our loved ones who have
died.
We pray for their peace and
happiness with God. We ask the Lord to
wrap them in his love.
And, besides that, we also pray
to our loved ones. They are with the
Lord as all saints are with the Lord.
And so, we ask their intercession
for us. We ask their help in whatever special
need we may now have in our earthly journey.
So, yes, we have given these
loved ones back to God. But, in this
way, just as God did not lose our loved ones in giving them to us, we have not
lost them in giving them back to God.
