Life is Changed Not Ended

Image by The Wandering Angel via Flickr

On the occasion of All Souls, let me offer my homily for the day. I hope you may find some consolation and peace, especially for those who have lost their dearest and best.

The past two days we have been placed before the great question that always haunts us, we who are mortals. It is this practical question of the end of life, we call death. Today, we are reminded that as mortals, we don’t live forever, no matter how much we try to add on those extra years to keep living. Then, again, there are those who would want to die now due to extreme pressures of life and just want to end it all. We are complicated creatures and just don’t know how to handle death and its implications well – in general.

The celebration like today is one way the Church offers us hope that even though we may not in this life be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect, we can still hold on that there are mansions for us in the kingdom of heaven through that very profound and loving act of God who completes our salvation, purifying us for glory. It is also on this note that we pray for the dead in a special way today, keeping clearest in mind that for the Lord’s faithful life is changed not ended.

In her eulogy to her brother, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple who passed away recently, Monica Simpson said that Steve valued highly beauty and has his life philosophy that hinges on the aesthetics and one that drove him to always aspired to make things that are ‘beautiful’ which people would want to use. Alongside that, she mentioned that her brother’s supreme virtue, his god of gods, was Love. In his final moments as he lay on his bed with his closest family and kin with him, Monica mentioned that he looked at his other sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then his wife Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. His last words as he looked past them was, “Oh Wow. Oh Wow. Oh Wow.”

I’d like to think that Steve Jobs at his final moments on this earth finally saw the Beauty and Love that he so aspired for all his life and realised in that instance what for us to mean in saying that life is changed and not ended. So, as we continue out celebration that commemorate the dead, in all humility and awe, we praise God and his goodness and love with the simplest words as only a child may utter: Oh Wow. Oh Wow. Oh Wow.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through Your mercy, rest in peace. Amen.


Related articles

• 2 November indulgences coming up. Have a plan? (wdtprs.com)
• One thing we owe to Steve Jobs (cnn.com)