Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

The liturgy today is for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed. The texts in the Roman Catholic Lectionary reflect the faith based on trust and intimate experience with the Divine that the relationship of Father to children and of Creator to creature is eternal. The delight of the Divine in those created in His image is not temporal. The teaching of Jesus through John’s Gospel is that those who die with Jesus will bring much life through Jesus. The Mystical Body of Christ which includes those living in the present and those “who have gone before” into the eternal is celebrated daily as the primary community to which we belong. Job proclaims “For I know that my Redeemer lives,

and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;

and after my skin has been thus destroyed,

then in my flesh I shall see God,”