JMJT! Praise be Jesus Christ! Now and Forever!
Yesterday we reflected on the Communion of Saints! What a joy and inspiration for all of us to reflect on the virtues and heroic prayers and deeds that were exercised and done by those who have gone before us. So often our focus is on the lives of the saints, and with good reason. They provide us with a road map as to how to reach sanctity in this life, and follow Jesus through the narrow gate. They serve as examplars of how to live our state in life with holiness and intimacy with God regardless of our particular calling or circumstances. From monks, priests and religious, to mothers and fathers, wives & husbands, royalty and impoverished, young or old, male or female, Asian, African, Hispanic, European or American the lives of the saints show us that in God's economy all of His children are special and the soul can ascend to Him regardless of one's station in life. Reading the lives of the saints is a recommended habit of souls who are seeking to increase in holiness and improve their prayer lives. I would suggest that it is also important to recognize the incredible role that saints play in our lives after their earthly life has ceased and they enter into their heavenly reward.
Several saints have promised that when they get to heaven, their new missions will begin for their brothers and sisters still on earth. St. Therese is remembered as promising her sisters as she lay dying that, " After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses. I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth. I will raise up a mighty host of little saints. My mission is to make God loved. Similarly, Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity [soon to be saint!] prophesied of her own mission as follows, "I think that in Heaven my mission will be to draw souls by helping them to go out of themselves in order to cling to God by a wholly simple and loving movement, and to keep them in this great silence within which will allow God to communicate Himself to them and to transform them into Himself."
At the risk of sounding insensitive or too casual about death and its finality, I was struck by how fruitful death can be recently while traveling in Redwood country in Northern California. As my teenage children and I stood beneath the incredible breadth of these towering trees of such majestic beauty, I was awed and amazed at how many levels of life and ecosystems were a part of each individual tree. When we came to an enormous downed tree that had fallen and died due to flooding, I stunned to read the following explanation of the Dyerville Giant that went down on March 24, 1991. "Unless fire consumes it, the Dyerville Giant will continue to lie here on the forest floor for many hundreds of years, fulfilling an important role in the healthy life of an ancient forest. As the decay process gains a hold on the Giant, it will become the host, home, and food source to over 4000 kinds of plans and animals that will live on or in it." More life abounds near these giants when they are decaying after death, than when they are alive and seemingly towering in strength above all else in the forest. Whereas there are over 1700 species of plants and animals the depend on a tree during its lifespan, more than three times that amount of living organisms will flourish on a downed and decaying tree.
St. Therese was an unknown and hidden soul during her lifetime, but God brought her to light after her death. Her example and autobiography A Story of A Soul have possibly converted and influenced more souls than any other book of the past century! Her fecundity as a saint after death cannot be denied, as her influence has continued to multiply and foster and nourish greater devotion and desire to love and serve the Lord. This is the precise promise of the Resurrection - that death does not have the last word and that our eternal souls will have special missions in the Heavenly Kingdom, just as we did on earth.
That is why our celebration of All Saints and All Souls brings to our attention the core purpose of our lives front and center. It is to live life to become a praise of Glory for God as Bl. Elizabeth proposes, and to continue our mission from life into death. This means listening and assenting to the little details, in order that our gardens of Carmel can become beautified and fruitful here, and multiply in its fertility for God in the hereafter.
