Saturday 2 November

The Faithful Departed

2 Macc 12:43-45, Ps 102, Rom 6:3-9,
John 11:21-27

Death is the most feared of all experiences, if not faced with faith and hope in Eternal Life. We read in the book of Maccabees that God’s People prayed for their dead. Most cultures, of all time, in all places, have believed in the ongoing life of the human spirit after death. In Jesus, the Eternal Word made flesh, God entered our history and our human development from conception in the womb till full adult life. He worked with human hands, and loved with a human heart. He entered the joys and suffering, the life and death, of full human experience. In doing this he has made all these experiences holy: he has baptised them all, except sin. By rising from the dead he has defeated death itself, and breathed his Spirit into us who believe in him. In this Gift of Himself he promises Eternal Life to all the Faithful Departed.