Homily for 2 Nov 2017

2 Nov 2017

All Souls Day

When you come inside and you have dirt on your shoes, what’s the first thing we hear?  “Take your shoes off!”  Especially now with all the falling leaves and then pretty soon with all the snow, we’ll hear that more often: “Take your shoes off before you come in!”  Or what about when it’s supper time...before you sit down at the table, you might hear somebody say, “Be sure to wash your hands first.” 

Before we come inside, before we sit down to eat, we get cleaned up.  And that’s how we can understand today’s Commemoration of All Souls.  When one of God’s sons or daughters dies, their soul goes to Heaven.  But Heaven is like going inside God’s house; it’s like sitting down at the table to eat with him and all the Saints and Angels.  And so, before the person goes into Heaven, they have to “take their shoes off” and “go wash up.”

Yesterday we celebrated All Saints—those people and angels who’ve already washed up and are in Heaven.  Today, however, we remember the souls of the faithful departed who are on “the doorstep of Heaven,” but are still getting cleaned up, getting ready to go in.  We pray for them today. 

In our Catholic Tradition, we call it “purgatory.”  And that’s a fancy word that simply means “a place of cleansing.”  When we “purge” ourselves, it means we get rid of anything we don’t want.  You know, whenever you clean out your closets, or you clean out your desks, you get rid of all the stuff you don’t want.  It’s like when you wash your hands; you get rid of all the dirt and germs, and wash them down the drain.  We “purge” ourselves; we “cleanse” ourselves.  That’s where we get the word “purgatory.”  Before we step into Heaven, we get all cleaned up.

And, really, to be in purgatory is a good thing.  When someone dies, we hope that their soul goes either right through the doors of Heaven, or that they’re at least at the doorstep of Heaven...”taking their shoes off and getting all washed up” so they can go into the feast of Heaven.  That’s what we pray for today.  But we pray with faith and hope, because God is a very merciful and loving God.  He wants us all to be with him, and all his Angels and Saints in Heaven.  And he even gives us practice at getting all cleaned up.

Whenever we come here to Mass, and we approach God and “sit down at his table,” the altar, what’s the first thing we do?  We dip our hands in the holy water, and then we “acknowledge our sins” and ask God to make us clean.  When get ourselves ready so we can enjoy the feast God has prepared for us—the feast of Sacred Scripture, the feast of his Body and Blood, and the enjoyment of being with each other in God’s house.  Right here at the start of Mass, we practice getting all “cleaned up” before enjoying the good things of God.

We pray for our brothers and sisters who have died, and are in that place of cleansing.  They’re on Heaven’s doorstep, which is a wonderful place to be.  May they soon enter the heavenly feast, and enjoy the company of all the Angels and the Saints.