On approaching the month of November, here at the Shrine, the devotees of Our Lady come to offer Masses for their deceased loved ones—those who have gone before them marked by faith, love and the struggles of human life. Death has a way of making faith very personal. We may have recited “I believe in the communion of saints” countless times, but when someone we love dies, those words suddenly take on a depth they never had before.
At the bedside of a dying person, there is often a strange mixture of sadness, tenderness and silence. A candle flickers, prayers are whispered, loved ones hold on to the final moments, and then comes that painful sentence: “He’s gone,” like a candle extinguished. Yet, in the light of our faith, we dare to say: he has not really gone. His bodily presence has left us, but he has journeyed into the mystery of God.
A twelve-year-old girl named Ruth, shortly before her death, told her parents that she knew God loved her and wanted to bring her to heaven. She knew she would be sad to leave them, and they would be sad to lose her, but she believed that because God was everywhere, she would remain close to them. There is something profoundly beautiful in such simple faith. Ruth understood what we so often struggle to believe.
The Church calls this mystery the communion of saints. Those already with God, those still journeying on earth, and the Holy Souls being purified are united in the bond of eternal love. Neither death nor anything else tears that bond apart.
This is why November is not simply a month of mourning. It is a month of hope and loving remembrance. We pray for our departed because love does not become irrelevant at death. Our prayers, sacrifices and especially the Eucharist become an expression of that love. We entrust our departed to the mercy of Christ, confident that His love is greater than our failures and His mercy deeper than our understanding.
Perhaps we sometimes wonder about those who seemed far from God, who had little faith or who lived estranged from the Church. We cannot know the secrets of another person’s final encounter with God. But we can hope. We can pray. And we can trust in the mercy of the only One who truly knows the human heart completely.
A little boy was dying in hospital. When he asked what dying would be like, the priest told him that God would send an angel to carry him to heaven. A few days later, as death approached, the child looked at the priest and whispered, “You’re wrong, Father. He’s coming himself.”
Perhaps that child understood something we adults sometimes forget. We grieve for them, we pray for them—and we entrust them to Christ. They belong to the communion of love that death cannot destroy.
And one day, we too hope to hear the same invitation: “Come, be with me where I am...forever.”