All Souls' Day: November 2, 2021
Wisdom 3: 1-9; Romans 5: 5-11; Mark 15:33-39, 16:1-6
What is the difference between a Christian and an unchristian outlook on anything?
Hope! The difference is hope. It is hope that makes us see a possibility even in the worst of our daily problems. Hope gives one the serenity and tranquility to approach every day problems with grace. One big unsolved question for the whole humanity is how to understand the end of life and beyond.
For a Christian, life is changed, not ended; it is transformed not terminated, explains the preface of the Mass for the dead. Jesus' resurrection fills us with hope and that hope does not disappoint us. The hope is towards eternal life, it is the eternal destination that characterises the culmination of this journey on earth.
Death is just the horizon beyond which we are not able to see what really exists; for if we see, there is no more place for hope (Rom 8:24). All that we see is the Risen Lord, who lives with us and lights our path. And in the Risen Lord is our hope. We hope to see every one of our brothers and sisters gone before us, united in the Risen Lord, as do the saints we celebrated yesterday and our prayer today is that these brothers and sisters of ours join their ranks and that we, at the end of our journey, join that wonderful family, the family that is founded on faith, united in love and kept alive in hope!
It is hope that makes us truly Christian!