November 2, 2025
John 6: 37-40
Today we celebrate the Feast of All Souls, recalling and praying for all our beloved departed ones. Our Gospel is part of Jesus’ Eucharistic discourse and appears directly after the account of the miracle of the loaves.
This year this feast falls on a Sunday which happens infrequently – about every seven years and, in many ways, this timing is a blessing. Very often when the Liturgy calls for Scripture readings about those who have died, we are grieving a particular person at his or her funeral, and that person is main focus of our reflection and our prayer. However, today we can consider a larger picture. According to the liturgical guidelines for All Souls Day, on this feast there is freedom in the choice of the day’s readings. I have selected a few, recalling some of Jesus’ additional teachings about eternal life which can assist us in our understanding and appreciation of death as new life.
Yesterday we imagined the multitude of holy ones, our own Saints. Today we remember and enter into the reality of those who have died and are perhaps still awaiting the opening of heaven’s gates on their behalf.
As we consider hope-filled words, we listen to Jesus and the new life promised to those who have passed from this life.
“The one who sees and believes in Jesus will be raised up”, “the souls of just are in the hands of God.” Jesus’ words can fill us with the “hope that does not disappoint”, and the multiplicity of images of new life reinforce our own convictions that those who have died are indeed in the hands of our loving God.
A good deal of the liturgical music used at the time of death are closely based upon Scripture or Liturgy. At times, too, this music encourages us to speak directly to the departed one – sharing words of faith and hope.
“May the choirs of angels come to greet you
May they speed you to paradise
May the Lord enfold you in his mercy
May you find eternal life.”
So hopefully you will be able to activate the link below and sing this special prayer for all our beloved – and all who are awaiting their turn at heaven’s gates. May they all come to live in the presence of our loving God!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25XhacPJF0
John 6: 37-40
Jesus said to the crowds:
“Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.”
The Gospel of the Lord
Meet Sister Evelyn McKenna, SNDdeN
