All Souls 2003. November 2, 2003. Our Lady of Grace 5:15, 9:30. Wisdom 3: 1-9. Romans 5: 5-11. John 11: 17-27.

I watched an old man with cancer of the pancreas deal with a disease that is almost always fatal. The doctor gave him three months to live. Morrie was one of the pillars of our parish. He was at daily Mass. He was also a part of almost every event we had. About this time of the year I asked Morris to talk at Sunday Mass about how it felt to be three months from death. Morrie said, “I will die when God says I will die, not when the doctor does. But I will talk at Mass.” His talk was a very inspirational testimony to his faith in God. A short time later Morrie told me that he was going to Florida for the winter as he always did. I told him that I better say goodbye now, because he only had three months to live. To my surprise Morrie returned from Florida looking better than ever. The doctors said that there was no sign of the cancer. Morrie had won the battle with cancer – and God had had the last word. Several years later I stood at Morrie’s bed side as he was dying. We had been through a lot together and he could see that there were tears in my eyes. He took my hand and said, “Father, the reason that I was born was to go to heaven. I am going to heaven now. Why are you so sad?”

At the bottom of a pond several little grub worms were crawling around. They could see bright light far above their heads. They had seen some of the older grub worms go up the stem of a water lily and head straight into the light. The grubs at the bottom of the pond wondered why the older grubs never returned to the bottom. The grub worms agreed among themselves that the next grub who went to the top of the stem would return to tell the others what it was all about. Several days passed before one old grub found himself drawn to the surface. As he crawled onto a lily pad leaf he was amazed at how bright and clear it was up there and how muddy and hard it had been to see at the bottom of the pond Suddenly something began to happen to the fat old grub. He began to split apart and it really hurt. He was sure that this was the end and that he was dying. All at once two magnificent, brightly colored wings popped out from under his old skin, and his old skin fell off like clothes that were being thrown away. Suddenly, the fat, crawling grub became a magnificent dragon fly. It was more than the grub had every imaged. He thought that he would remain a grub forever. As the newly formed dragon fly flew back and forth over the pond he could see the other grubs, his friends, in the pond below, but they couldn’t see him. The dragon fly realized that his wings would not do well in water so he could not return to tell his friends what had happened to him. Even if he could return, he was sure that his friends would neither recognize him nor believe what had happened.

“Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Do we believe in eternal life? Do we believe that when we die, we still live in ways beyond our guessing, or dreaming or even our desiring? One of the blessings of our society is the fabulous advancements in medicine that allow us to save lives from a dread disease like cancer and to support and prolong life in ways never imagined in the past. I have witnessed medical miracles and seen people who have been restored to heath by the wonders of cotemporary health care. I have also watched people cling to life when the situation was impossible, acting as if they would never die and seeming to say that this life was all that they had; perhaps they did not really believe in eternal life.

Do you believe in eternal life? My mother is 92 years old. She has a sign on her apartment wall that says, “Do not resuscitate.” I think that the sign is morbid, maybe even insensitive. My mother does not. She wears a rosary around her neck so that she can find it when she wants to pray. She goes to Mass every day. She says that she is ready to go home. I am sure that she believes in eternal life.

Belief in eternal life helps us make hard decisions about health care. It also helps us make hard decisions about what in life is worth dying for. How does anyone lay down his or her life for freedom, or for justice, or for family or friends without belief in eternal life? A solid belief in eternal life enlarges our ability to lay down our lives for the people we love and for the values in which we believe.

On this Feast of All Souls we remember that death is the only doorway to heaven that God has given us. We call to mind those who have gone before us into death. They are still members of our family. We reach out to them with our prayers and they continue to touch our lives with their intercession and their love. The Saints in heaven, the souls in purgatory, and the visible and not so visible Church on earth are all one family and one people of God. Bound together by our faith in eternal life, we pray today that we will all come to the glory of God’s kingdom, which is more than anything we can imagine. May God have mercy on us all and bring us safely home to eternal life.