"Dear brothers and sisters!
Yesterday, on All Saints' Day, we dwelt upon "the heavenly city,
Jerusalem, our mother" (Preface of All Saints). And today, our souls
turn again to these last things as we commemorate all the faithful
departed, those "who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith
and sleep in peace." It's very important for us Christians to live our
relationship with the dead in the truth of faith, and to look at death
and the afterlife in the light of Revelation.
Already the Apostle Paul, writing to the first communities, exhorted
the faithful to "not be downhearted, like the others who have no hope."
"If in fact" he wrote, "we believe that Jesus died and rose, so also
God, by means of Jesus, will gather up with him all those who have died"
(1 Thes 4:13-14).
It's necessary even today to spread the message of the reality of
death and eternal life -- a reality particularly subject to
superstitious and syncretic beliefs, for the Christian truth cannot risk
itself to be mixed up with mythologies of various sorts.
In my encyclical on Christian hope, I myself investigated the
mystery of eternal life. I asked: even for the men and women of today,
the Christian faith is a hope that can transform and sustain their
lives? Even more radically: the men and women of our time likewise
desire eternal life?
Or maybe their earthly existence has become their only horizon? In
reality, as St Augustine already observed, everyone wants the "blessed
life," that happiness. We don't know what it is or what it's like, but
we feel ourselves attracted toward it. This is a universal hope, shared
by people of all times and places.
The expression "eternal life" gives a name to this insuppressible
expectation: not a progression without end, but the immersion of oneself
in the ocean of infinite love, where time, the beginning and end exist
no more. A fullness of life and of joy: it's this for which we hope and
await from our being with Christ.
Let us today renew our hope in eternal life, one really drawn in the
death and resurrection of Christ. "I am risen and now I am always with
you," the Lord tells us, and my hand sustains you. Wherever you might
fall, you will fall in my hands and I will be present even at the gate
of death. Where none can accompany you any longer and where you can
bring nothing, there I await you to transform for you darkness into
light.
Christian hope is never something merely individual, it's always a
hope for others. Our lives are deeply linked, one to another, and the
good and bad each one does always impacts the rest. So the prayer of a
pilgrim soul in the world can help another soul that continues purifying
itself after death.
And for this, today the church invites us to pray for our beloved
dead and to spend time at their tombs in the cemeteries. Mary, star of
hope, make stronger and more authentic our faith in eternal life and
sustain our prayer of suffrage for our departed brothers".
