All Souls

In the month of November we remember our brothers and sisters who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. We don’t know where they are. All we know is that they are already in eternity for ever. Some of them still have to undergo a kind of purification, because they are not completely cleaned to enjoy God’s presence. They are happy because they know they are on their way to heaven, but they earnestly desire to be transformed to be able to withstand God’s love. They don’t want to enter heaven yet. They need the right garment. It is like going to a formal party dressed in shorts and tee shirt, while all women are wearing long dresses and the men dinner suits. If you are going there, you would need to change your clothes.

We can help them to shorten their stay in purgatory. They cannot help themselves, but we can give them a hand. We have the keys to liberate them from their long imprisonment. Once two monks debated among themselves this question: What is more important, to pray for the living, or for the dead? One of them always prayed for the living and the other for the dead. The one praying for the living said: “the dead are already saved; the living can go either way.” The other monk answered: “you are right, but imagine you come across two beggars, one young and the other old. To whom would you give your money?” He answered: “To the old one because the young one can get a job.” “You are right. It is the same with souls. The living have the necessary graces to go to heaven. The dead cannot help themselves.” Therefore it is more pleasing to God that we pray for the souls in purgatory.

Let us be generous with our prayers and sacrifices. Not many people remember them. How often do we think about them? Out of sight, out of mind. Protestants don’t believe in purgatory. They don’t have the tradition of praying for the dead and therefore nobody is praying for them. Even though Purgatory is not a place but a state of being, it is getting full and we need to help God to empty it. If we pray now for the holy souls, when we die people will remember us. Then we will be very grateful to them, to be able to jump from one place to the other. Once talking with an old lady, she commented: “Father, when you are getting old, this is all that matters.”

Saint Josemaria used to call the holy souls in purgatory “my good friends”. Let us foster in our hearts a friendship with them, a relationship that will last forever and will help us to fix our eyes on the other life, the real life of the future. Let us finish the month of November with a renewed acquaintance with them.

They are very powerful in front of God. It is one of the best devotions. God listens to them, who are crying day and night. They cannot help themselves, but they can offer their sufferings for us. Any soul we help to reach heaven is going to intercede for us till we die. There will be a multitude of souls welcoming us when we reach the other life. We will ask our guardian angel who they are, and he will tell us that these are our friends the holy souls in purgatory.

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All Saints

Once a year in November the Church on earth as a good mother helps us to remember our brothers and sisters who have made it into eternity. On the first of this month, the saints in heaven; on the second, the souls in purgatory. They say there are around 10.000 saints recognised by the Church. It is impossible to count all the saints in heaven. We don’t have time to canonise every person who enters into glory. There are millions of them. We call them anonymous saints, which means saints with no names; not for God, because for Him all of us have a hidden name. At least once a year we remember them and hopefully one day it will be our feast day. Today it is the biggest celebration in heaven regarding the number of celebrants who are celebrating their dies natalis, their birth into heaven.

The remembrance of the saints helps us to lift up our eyes to heaven. It doesn’t make any difference to them, because they are already immersed in God; they don’t need our prayers. But we need their example, their model of life, their inspiration, their intercession. Not to copy them, because every person is unique, but to reassure ourselves that we all have the necessary graces to make it to heaven, that the ball is in our court, that God is willing, and it is up to us to make it there.

What’s holiness? It doesn’t mean to be perfect. It means that when we die, we go straight to heaven. It is impossible to be perfect, but we could make it to heaven thanks to God’s grace. We all feel that if we die now we can hardly make it to purgatory. How can we reach heaven? Through the mercy of God. It is so powerful that it can make us holy. And it is there, up for grabs. The Church wants today to remind us that we are made for heaven, that we come from God and we are going back to him. It is possible for us to become holy. It is good for us to remember the famous question saint Ignatius asked himself, when he was reading lives of saints, and experienced a peaceful feeling in his soul, in front of those beautiful examples: “If they could do it, why not I?” The devil is trying to discourage us; he wants us to be convinced that it is very difficult to reach heaven.

Once saint Thomas Aquinas’ sister asked him a very difficult question, maybe the most important question of our lives, the same question the rich young man put to Jesus: What do we have to do to go to heaven? Thomas, who was a man of few words, and he was very precise with his explanations, answered with two words: “velle illud”. It is a Latin expression that means: to want it. It is not a matter of conviction but of desire. God will open the gates of heaven if we want it, if we push them open with our struggle, with our desires to be with Him.

We need to remind ourselves of the power of God. Saint Josephine Bakhita, at the end of her life, expressed in these simple words, hidden behind a smile, the journey of her life: “I travel slowly, one step at a time, because I am carrying two big suitcases. One of them contains my sins, and in the other, which is much heavier, are the infinite merits of Jesus Christ. When I reach heaven I will open both suitcases and say to God: Eternal Father, now you can judge. And to Saint Peter: Close the door, because I’m staying here.”

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Zacchaeus

There were three big obstacles that prevented Zacchaeus from seeing Jesus. They seemed insurmountable, but because he wanted with all his might to see Jesus, he overcame them all, one after the other. We all have some hurdles that make it difficult for us to discover God. And we need to jump over them one by one. Every man has a desire deep in his heart to see God, a hunger for the happiness that only an infinite being can fulfill. We are restless until we find our creator, and we wish to attain the end that we are being created for.

Zacchaeus was so short he couldn’t see Jesus over the crowds around him. Short people normally have a strong will and they have to learn how to push hard, because they have to stand up for themselves; they have to fight to be able to jump and reach their desires. Our smallness is always in front of us. We cannot forget about it, even though we daydream or try to live in a virtual reality; sooner or later we have to come down to our true level and confront our nothingness. Our artificial life on the internet, cannot be our real life. Without God it is easy to have a low self esteem, hate ourselves, long for attention, and try to hide behind all sort of addictions, that only serve to dig our hole deeper and eventually destroy ourselves. We forget what theologians call the love of predilection: God loves us not because we are good, but we are good because he loves us. His love comes first, independently of how we behave or what we think or what we do. We are his creatures and he made us. And we Christians are also his children. Therefore we need to concentrate more on his love for us and not get bogged down if we find it difficult to see something good in ourselves.

The crowd was big. Everybody wanted to see the famous prophet. And because they envied and hated Zacchaeus for his riches, they didn’t allow him to see Jesus on purpose. They could see him running along the line of people as Jesus was passing by, and they lifted up their bodies higher for him to see nothing. The biggest obstacle for Zacchaeus to see Jesus was his riches. They didn’t allow him to see Jesus. They were in the way. Once he concentrated in Jesus, he was saved. Our second biggest obstacle is in the world, the multitude of things, people and events that surround us. They can be in the way because we keep looking at them. We don’t see the wood for the trees. As Saint Thomas Aquinas puts it, wealth, honours, power or pleasure, we think they bring us happiness. And over and over again we are mistaken. The happiness of a human soul can only be in an infinite being.

Lastly Zacchaeus had to overcome shame, human respect, peer pressure and a desire for prestige and fame. The last thing he had to do was to climb a tree in front of everybody. Even though he was dressed in expensive clothes, he disregarded what people thought of him and climbed like a monkey. This showed Jesus that he really wanted to see him. There is always a tree for us to climb and see Jesus. We need to find that tree and show Jesus that we are interested in him.

Jesus told Zacchaeus to come down: I want to come to your house. He gave half of his property to the poor, making room for Jesus. He is telling us the same thing: come down from your addictions and let me enter into your life. There are a few things we need to give away.

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