On November 1st, the feast of All Saints, we remember those holy women and men who have gone before us; people, who have lived good and wholesome lives and have merited eternal reward with God in Heaven.
Their names may not be registered with the well-known saints, nevertheless, saints they are and we set aside a special day in the calendar to honour them and to intercede with them on our behalf.
On the following day, November 2nd, All Souls Day, we pray for all the departed, praying in Christian hope that they are with God and the saints in Heaven.
In the Gospel to be read in Catholic churches tomorrow we are again brought face to face with the idea of resurrection and an after life.
The Sadducees - those who say that there is no resurrection - approached Jesus and they put this question to him.
"Master we have it from Moses in writing, that if a man's married brother dies childless, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother. Well, then there were seven brothers. The first having married a wife, died childless. The second and then the third married the widow, And the same with all seven, they died leaving no children. Finally, the woman herself died. Now at the resurrection, to which of them will she be wife since she had been married to all seven?" ▓ Luke 20: 27-33.
A nice piece of casuistry on the part of the sadducees!
But in his reply Jesus tells them that the God of Moses is the God of the living, not of the dead, "for to him all men are in fact alive".
So what is this resurrection all about? Christians believe that life does not end in the grave but that the human spirit takes on a new life with God in Heaven.
It certainly is a difficult tale to explain and in a world that is permanently clued into solving problems immediately and rationally the idea of making any sense of a life beyond, a life that is ultimately unexplainable, is a tall order indeed.
It is a question of faith, a question of Christian hope, but a hope and faith that are based on God's word.
We believe we are made to achieve a potential away beyond anything this world can offer, union with God in perfect harmony and to try to tie it down any more than that might well lead us into creating a world of our own making, a world of make belief.
There might have been in the past an attempt to use the "next world" as a type of cure-all for all the miseries we find ourselves suffering. Those who were poor or suffering might have been told to grin and bear it all as this world is only a passing phase, some sort of test to prepare and refine us for life eternal. That's not really much of a message for the poor and hungry and might even lead to escapism and forms of superstition.
As Christians we believe the new times have already begun. The incarnation has set the process in motion, a process, which reaches fulfilment with God in Heaven.
Explaining the how or why is an impossible task. Maybe four or five times a year I visit my mother's grave. It has heather growing over it and a friend of mine and fellow Dominican, who has since gone to his eternal reward, designed and made the headstone.
When I visit that grave I never know exactly what to say or do. I consider my mother one of those saints we remember on All Saints Day. She was not a pious woman. I often say about her that she burned her bra before Irish women were wearing bras. I look down at that grave and say silently, "Mum, if there be a God in Heaven, you are there with that God".
And in the end, with all my doubting and hesitations, my own sinfulness and failing, I am inspired and consoled with the idea that we are made for resurrection. There is a life after death, a life with the living God.
F.MacE.