“We are Spirit Beings on a Human Journey” (attributed to Teilhard de Chardin)
Celebrating All Souls Day on a Sunday this year fits right in with a resurrection focused liturgy on Sunday. Our first reading is from the book of Wisdom, about the people who have died, reminding us not to see death as destruction, but rather as a transition. The writer tells us that God tested them like gold in a furnace and found them worthy through his grace and mercy, because they trusted in him. This is a clear indication that, just because we go through trials and tribulations in this life, it does not mean that God has forgotten us. We are being tested in a furnace and we will emerge like gold, and the fire (trials) may not always be as gruesome or hot as at other times.
John, in the book of Revelation, brings us back to here and now, in a new heaven and a new earth. This message sounds very simple: “the home of God is among humans”. But do we fully realize the depths of this message? John writes about a “bride (which is earth and all that is in it) adorned for her husband (who is God the Creator Spirit)”. As in a marriage, where “the two become one flesh”, so God inhabits our earth bodies. God is in the earth and our Anishnabe ancestors knew and lived this. God is within us. If we realized and believed the enormity of this fact, our attitudes to everything and everyone around us would be different. All our façades and our imagined needs would be no more.
In the gospel, Jesus is fully aware of who he is, a human being infused with the Spirit of his Father, who is also our Father and our Creator. We see the compassion and love of God in Jesus, the compassion to which we are also called. Perhaps Jesus is asking you and me to “arise”, as he said to the young man being carried out, “I say to you, rise!” What do we need to rise from or rise to, so that our spirits don’t have to wander too long once our spirit separates from our bodies? The saints are those who have completed their journey and reached their destination. We, the spirit beings still on the human journey, need to rise from the death of lies, pretentions, and all false beliefs of temporary gratifications that this world offers. Let us rise to truth, honesty, respect, courage; and to living the faith and to trusting in Jesus who is also our ancestor leading us.
– Sr. Terri (Kateri) Beaudry
