By Sister Mary Scholastica, O.C.D.
All Souls Day. This day becomes more and more meaningful the older one gets. This will one day, be a day when others are remembering you and me. Sobering, isn’t it?
In these last months, we have buried many dear friends of our community. Every funeral I attend brings me to a greater awareness of the brevity of life. It’s short. It’s fleeting. It’s fast. Even if one lives to be in their 90s. Life is still short. Just ask anyone in their 90s!
You’ve probably heard this said before, it’s the “ – ” (dash symbol) that counts. You have your birth year and of course no one knows the day or the hour of death. It’s all the in-between that’s captured in the dash that counts. It boils down in the end, to a single simple dash. Another sobering thought…but that’s not what this reflection is about!
I continue to be grateful to be part of a religious family whose deceased members are reverenced and regularly remembered throughout the entire year. Every year. We recognize that our religious family would be incomplete without them, we continue to learn and receive from them and hold ourselves to a life-long obligation to pray for them. It consoles my heart because when my dash is drawn and aspects of my life are left incomplete with my death, I know that I will be remembered when it’s my turn. These sisters of mine coming up after me will not forget the bonds of charity that bind us together.
We are also each a part of a larger universal family – the world, the Church especially and our families of origin. We cannot forget our brothers and sisters who have died and are in need of our assistance in prayer. Unbeknownst to us simply because we often do not think like this, our lives have been impacted by many people we have never met here on this earth. Because of their life choices, their lives have made ours possible. I think of my great-grandmother who during the Korean war converted to Christianity. Her daughter (my grandmother) who suffered greatly, in time followed her mother’s example. Because of this, two generations of Christians in the Lee family followed. Until more recently, I never thought to pray for family members generations back. But without them, I wouldn’t be here and somehow at this time, I feel as if they are depending on my prayers. They are wanting to be remembered. It’s an awesome thought, isn’t it? All the connective tissue that binds us together. We spend a good chunk of our lives oblivious to it.
Do you know how fulfilling it is to pray for holy souls, especially a soul that has no one to remember or pray for him or her? When you pray for the holy souls, you can be general or specific. You can pray for someone who suffered with addiction, for a priest, bishop, pope or religious sister who neglected to fully live his/her calling. A relative of yours whom no one remembers, a spouse who left his/her marriage, a dad who neglected his children, a mom who struggled with guilt all her life, someone who died instantly in a car crash, someone whose anger issues got the best of him/her, someone who killed another, someone who died from cancer, our brothers and sisters who died on the warfront. There is someone waiting for you to remember them. By our prayers, we have the ability to assist them on their journey, to bring them one step closer to seeing God face-to-face. WOW. When you think of it this way…. it’s amazing! When we get to heaven, they will be waiting to welcome us home. What a wonderful thought!
As you can see, All Souls Day, is “loaded”. May this brief reflection serve to inspire you to daily pray for our brothers and sisters who are greatly in need of our prayers at this time. I know they will thank you. There’s a part of me that hopes this reflection too will be a source of blessing when my life on earth is done. Because some of you will read this and be drawn to pray more for the holy souls, that means in some small way, I’ll also have been a part of that person’s journey into heaven. Wow. Thank you.
