This memorial of the Faithful Departed should be seen as a grace-filled attempt at focusing on the Reality in which we are called to live: the Reality of the Mystical Body. 

Unfortunately, the commonly used name we give to this day reflects some of the misconceptions of being in time and space while on this earth: All Souls.   

Souls by themselves cannot exist and they are impossible to visualize. If you have seen a pictorial interpretation of “souls” in Purgatory, you saw naked bodies engulfed in flames. Human beings exist on this side and on the other side of the grave. 

The components of a human being are more than just body and soul; there are also mind and heart, spirit and flesh, ethnicity and culture, temperament, and personality.   

Since God is love and all are destined to be God-like, to be love, as people die in their imperfection and sins, they need to be purified of whatever is not God-like, of whatever is not love. 

This process of purification is commonly referred to as Purgatory.  

We know that we can shorten the “detention time” of those in Purgatory by our sacrifices, prayers, indulgences and, especially, by offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for them. 

For this reason, this day of the Faithful Departed transports us beyond the confinements of time and space and allows us to contemplate the reality of the Mystical Body of Christ from God’s eternal point of view. 

St. Paul writes extensively about the Mystical Body from God’s point of view. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. [30] And those he predestined he also called; and those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified. Romans 8:29-30 

So, as St. Paul confirms, it is Jesus who restores our integrity, both in our spiritual and physical dimensions by conforming us to the perfection of his divine/human image.   

On the other side of time and space, this has already taken place: indeed, St Paul uses the past tense! (foreknew, predestined, called, justified, glorified) 

Think about it: with all our brothers and sisters who died in the Lord we are already glorified in the completeness of our humanness (that is Heaven). 

However, from our earthly point of view, as we see events unfolding within time and space, we ought to be reminded that we always owe each other the debt of love and that we can misuse and abuse the freedom we received as adopted children of God, and sin.  

Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Romans 13:8 

With every sin we commit, we affect in a negative way the Mystical Body of Christ and we grow lukewarm towards our obligation to liquidate our debt of love. 

This debt extends also to the members of the Body of Christ who are being purified by the “fire” of divine love combined with the “fire” of their sudden, most intense grief and embarrassment.  

To pay off our debt of love to the faithful departed dear to our hearts (and I would add those for whom nobody prays) to those two “fires” we must add the “fire” of our love for them to speed up their purification process to make them Christ-like, to make them pure love. 

The fire of God’s love is easy to picture just by looking at the Crucifix. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life”. John 3:16 

Let us try to picture the fire suddenly ignited into their minds and hearts after death. 

Freed from all earthly distractions, the faithful departed suffer the shock of their life as they stand before the absolute, blinding perfection of God. 

We can have a faint idea of the embarrassment they ought to endure by recalling our embarrassments whenever humiliated or we were exposed to the scorn of others. 

Our debt of love that we owe each other compels us to pray, to make sacrifices, to get even the leverage of the merits of Christ, the Blessed Mother and all the saints (indulgences) and, specially, to offer the Eucharistic Celebration (that is the ultimate expression of sacrificial love), all we can, for them to ease their pain and to fill them with trust in God’s mercy. 

This we do today and, as often as we can, because this way of loving stands at the very core of our fellowship in the Mystical Body of Christ.  

And we hope that others will do the same for us after we die.