Location: San Fernando Cemetery II
After celebrating the Solemnity of All Saints, the Church invites us today to commemorate all the faithful departed. This celebration reminds us that life is a journey. Sometimes it is long. In some cases it is short. It has ups and downs, easy sections and difficult ones. In any case, all our paths have one last step. Pope Francis says: “The important thing is that that final step finds us on a journey, not strolling around.”
We know that the path to heaven is endless, and we are unable to go through it with human means. No one reaches heaven on their own merits. The promise that God makes to us is that, if we walk hand in hand with his Son Jesus, He will allow us to reach the end of the road with Him. Jesus himself is the way, the truth and the life.
Whoever has found Jesus, and has decided to walk with him, has already reached the goal, which is the encounter with the Father, although His glory has not yet been fully revealed to us. We need to believe that Christ is our Good Shepherd, who will lead us to the green pastures of heaven. We need to trust that Jesus is our resurrection and our life!
The resurrection of Christ is at the core of our faith, and therefore our own resurrection is too. Especially today, we visit the cemetery to pray for our loved ones who have gone before us. We come to visit them to express our affection for them again, and to try to feel close to them. In this way we remember a very important element of our faith, which is the communion of saints. Those of us who still walk on this earth are truly united in communion with those who have already reached heaven. We look forward to the day when we will walk together again in the life to come.
It seems like we are far away, but as I already said, although it may not seem like it, we already enjoy a foretaste of heaven. Those of us who believe, with all our hearts, that Jesus is the Son of God, who became Man to save us with the sacrifice of his own death and his resurrection, also believe everything He has revealed to us: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life…”All of us will rise. The Father has entrusted us into the hands of the Son. This is our cause for hope. As St. Paul says, our hope “does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Rom).
Our loved ones, who have gone before us, are “in the hand of God” (Wis). They are also his family, and God remains faithful to his family. He will not reject anyone who comes to him.
We commemorate the lives of the faithful departed with faith and hope in the Lord. He has made us all his own family. We entrust them to His mercy. Even as their death hurts us, it also reminds us that we are on the path of hope. Paths in cemeteries are metaphors for the path of our lives, which leads to eternity. They remind us of our total dependence on God. Therefore, rooted by our spiritual memory, we need also to reflect on how we may live our own lives in the light of the inevitability of death, which shall come to each one of us.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for our faithful departed and help us prepare well for heaven.
