Daily Reflection
November 25th, 2006
by

Eileen Wirth

Journalism Department
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Revelations 11:4-12
Psalm 144:1, 2, 9-10
Luke 20:27-40

“So they went up to heaven in a cloud as their enemies looked on.”

It’s November, what we used to call in grade school the month of the Poor Souls. I remember the purple bulletin boards with small tongues of fire that represented Purgatory. We filled Purgatory with the names or pictures of the people we were praying for. It was all so concrete and specific, unlike today’s readings from Revelation and Luke.

I find both passages simultaneously difficult to understand and comforting. Both tell us that we will live eternally with God even if that life is clouded in mystery as the passage from Revelations suggests and that it will be different from our current life as Jesus tells us. “Those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels.”

However different this new life will be, Jesus says that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is “not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

During November, especially, I like to think of my dead relatives and friends enjoying their new lives. The child in me fantasizes about what eternal life is like.

Do the people in heaven laugh and sing? Are they having fun? Is my beloved uncle who lived in enormous pain finally free from all suffering? Is my dear friend who died at 40 of cancer still guiding her children in some fashion?

Of course these questions have no answers. Only God knows what awaits us after death. But far from leading us to fear death, today’s readings should help us to celebrate God’s great gifts of life – both now and eternally.

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