All Souls Day – November 2
Wisdom 3:1-9
Romans 6:3-9
Matthew 25:31-46

A. Text/Context

• The long gospel today talks to us about the last things: the parousia which means the end of times accompanied with the final judgment which the gospel talks to us in great details, eternal punishment, and eternal life
• The gospel concerns with what is good for others: food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, a welcome to strangers, clothes for the naked, care for the sick, and visits to those who are in prisons
• These are basic human needs and these will be the bases for his criteria on the day of judgment
• The bases are just the very simple and ordinary acts of charity that we perform to other people. They are not impossible to perform
• And after that, the result of the judgment, the segregation follows: those who do these things are the righteous and they will have eternal life, but to those who do not they will have eternal punishment

B. Human Situation

• My brothers and sisters, on the day of judgment, God the judge will not ask his subjects a long list of success and fame or achievements that we have made while we were on our earthly life
• God will not ask who among us is the most brilliant or the most intelligent or who is the most famous or the most handsome and beautiful
• He has only one criterion and that is charity. He will only ask are you charitable to others? Let us note carefully the dialogues in the gospel for the sake of clarity:
• Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me”
• Then the righteous or the good people will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”
• The Lord will answer: all the things that you do to your fellow men and women you also do them to me
• Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me”
• “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
• “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
• “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
• So this is now judgment day! If you have noticed in the dialogue that whether good or bad they call the judge Lord. There is now a recognition similar to what happened when Thomas said: My Lord and my God
• This is a revelation from God that whether a person is a believer or a non-believer of God, everybody will recognize the judge and they will all call Him Lordand everybody will accept the judgment given to each individual in the end
• As Catholic Christians, it has been a tradition for us to remember and pray for all the souls of the faithful departed even before the writing of the bible was finished
• The souls that are already in the abode of heaven is what we call the CHURCH TRIUMPHANT
• Purgation, purification, or cleansing is an act of justice and mercy from God as payment for our sins that has been forgiven already
• The bible is very silent about the doctrine of purgatory and where the bible is very silent the traditions are so full of it
• Jesus said to St. Faustina Kowalska of the Divine Mercy that my mercy does not demand purgatory, but my justice requires it
• St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina also said: we must empty purgatory by praying the rosary
• Purgatory is like a bus terminal, souls are arriving and leaving. Those who are leaving are the souls destined for heaven because they benefitted from the prayers of the Church. Purgatory is what we call the CHURCH SUFFERING
• And the souls in purgatory pray in turn for all the living still struggling to become good and holy, we are the CHURCH MILITANT. The 2nd reading in the Romans says that we are in union with Christ in death and in the resurrection
• Now the question is: How do we prepare ourselves when the time comes that we have to render our personal accounting of what we did to others?
• When the last judgment will come, or when we just suddenly die any moment from now?
• So you see, the demand of doing good to others is the criteria of God in order for us to have a passing mark in the day of judgment
• So according to the 1st reading in Wisdom – for the righteous they will be chastised a little but they shall greatly blessed, because they also commit sin because they are very human

C. Challenge

• In this celebration of All Souls Day we are reminded to continue praying for all the souls,those who died ahead of us and especially those who are no longer remembered
• We are also reminded to continue the good things that we do to others, to continue our acts of charity to others as the virtue of charity erases many of our sins, the catechism that we know as the corporal works of mercy
• God reminds his people to do good to their neighbors because the bottom line of doing good is that we make other people happy
• While we perform our ordinary duties wholeheartedly we are already doing good even by just simply being faithful to our assigned tasks
• What shall we present to the Lord in the final days when our hands are empty of the good actions that we are supposed to do?
• As we continue with this celebration let us reflect what good acts have we done to our fellow brothers and sisters to redeem our soul on the day that we will die
• Let us all be rest assured that if we die a real penitent God will always accept us taking into considerations also the many good things we did for others
• And lest we forget, as a communion of saints we must always pray for the souls of the deadin purgatory because they all prayed for us