“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter on heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die.” Although it is always our duty as human beings to remember our loved ones who have died, during November the Catholic Church invites us to do so publicly on behalf of all. To this end, November begins with two linked days of remembering: All Saints’ Day, as we rejoice with and for those who have attained union with God beyond death “in heaven;” and All Souls’ Day, when we offer prayers on behalf of all who have died, and are still being moved, by God’s grace and their cooperation, to complete happiness in God.
Typical of our Catholic faith, religious practices are linked with the movements of nature. As we see autumn pass into winter, and darkness descend on the earth, so we are invited to remember our Maker, and to contemplate our own pending death, and to remember our dear friends and family members who have “gone before us” into the “end without end.” And we remember and entrust to God all human and other beings who have lived and died throughout the ages. What we want for ourselves, we ask for each and for all: unending happiness, the fulfillment of all the good that God created each one to be.
“In God alone is my soul at rest.” We lovingly entrust our dear ones who have died to the only One who can give life eternally, because He is Life. God is the life of all that lives. And as Pope John Paul said so well, “When God gives life, He gives it eternally.” With trust in God—not in ourselves, nor even primarily in those we love most—we offer ourselves, all that we have, all whom we live, to “the God and Father of all.” In ourselves, of ourselves, we have no substantial being, no enduring life, for in time we are perishing. In God we live, you live, your parents live, each of God’s creatures live. I think that it dishonors God to speak of those who died as “dead.” They died in time; they live in eternity. Eternity is another name for the non-temporal way that God is. To God nothing is dead. Rather, “to Him all are alive.”
Hence, November is a month for entrusting our deceased loved ones to God, not as though God needs our prayers to have mercy on His creatures, but because God is the ever-flowing, ever-creating Good, from whom each comes, to whom each returns. November is a beautiful time for remembering not the dead, but the God who is now and forever. We worship God by lovingly, gratefully remembering His beloved ones who have died in time, live in our hearts and memories, but far more importantly, live because God is.
