Entire homily of Superior General,November 2...

(Rome)
HOMILY OF THE P. ROGERIO GOMES CSsR

FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE DEPARTED FAITHFUL

Dear Brothers, dear Brothers and Sisters present at this celebration,

Yesterday we celebrated the solemnity of all the saints—that is, the men and women who, like all of us, throughout their personal history, have guided their lives by the ways of God and love of others. They are lights that guide us on our personal and community path to holiness, never forgetting our humanity. The saints were men and women who allowed the fragments of their fragility and their virtues to be assembled with the divine cement to form a beautiful work of art, the mosaic of holiness. The beauty and splendor of God show that the first path to holiness is consciousness of our fragments, without considering us useless on this earth. Our fragments can always be works of art of profound beauty.

In continuation of yesterday's celebration, today we celebrate the faithful departed.. The experience of finality is part of everything that exists, except God. We humanly define this experience as death. The threshold between life and death is very thin. We live with death every day and forget that it makes us live: we feed on beings, animals and plants, that are "dead". We live every day with death: from natural death to that caused by man himself to his brothers and sisters: death caused by disease, war, famine, migration, abortion, euthanasia, injustice he. In the face of death, our experience may be of pain, of abandonment, or of profound indifference. Death is the shadow that accompanies us every day, which we fear because we don’t know it and because it is, humanly speaking, our experience of nothingness. This takes on new meaning through faith, the light that shows us something beyond the darkness of the grave.

As we listen to today's Gospel (Mt 25,31-46), we can ask ourselves: What does this have to do with celebrating the faithful who are dead? Should we not talk of the resurrection more than those who practiced righteousness and those who did not? Leaving aside the beauty and depth of the texts that tell us about the resurrection, life, and eternity, Matthew's text touches on something fundamental. Experiencing the Kingdom of God goes through history and the personal relationships we have with our neighbor and our love for Him. "All that they did for one of these younger brothers of mine, they did for me" (Mt 25,40). Therefore, resurrection is when we present ourselves naked before the Lord of Time and History and bring Him only our hands full of the good we have done in this world. It is when we totally agree with God and live in Him alone. He is our eternal life! As Job reminds us: “I know that my redeemer lives and that, at the end, he will rise from the dust!” After this skin of mine is plucked off without my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him, my eyes will behold him, and no one else” (Job 19, 25-27).

Celebrating the faithful departed is to remember those we love, who were present with us, and who are now experiencing life in God. Celebrating today allows us to remember with gratitude the people who have left their mark on our history. So we want to entrust them to the Lord as our most precious gift, which we received from Him and that we now return to Him, even with the pain of nostalgia, with deep gratitude. At the same time, we prepare for our ultimate Easter with the Lord, the place where we will one day meet one day by divine love. Those who have gone have kept quiet, but we believe in the resurrection, in the fellowship of the saints, in eternal life. They are and live in God.

As Brother Prudente Nery, Capuchin friar, wrote, on the day of his Easter: “When winter comes in the northern hemisphere, with no one instructing them, birds spontaneously launch into the sky to embark on an incredible adventure. Driven by a mysterious legacy of its kind, following solely the earth’s magnetic pulses, they fly, following the sun’s footprints, for thousands of miles, night and day, only to try to stay alive. So shall it be for us too when, at the sunset of every autumn, the cold of winter descends upon us. Driven by the fascinating fate of our species, we will then fly, following only the calls of eternity, to the abode of light, the heart of God. And there we will know what we now only intuition, and, hearing Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, we will believe: There are no two kingdoms, the one of the dead and the one of the living, of the earth and of the heavens, but only of God, who wills it we were eternal."

On this day, I want to remember the lives of all the brethren who have been consumed in favor of redemption (days impedere pro redemptis) and who have died of natural causes, by the cross of disease, or who have given their lives by faith, as ours red martyrs. Through the communion of the saints, they remain alive with us because of their redemption memories and what they did during their time on earth. They were meaningful lives and they gave meaning to many other lives through preaching the Gospel, listening to confessions, the innumerable missionary works they performed and their charity to the poor. They understood that whatever is done for one of the little ones is done for the Lord. Thankful to them for the many lives laid down and in anticipation of the day we meet with the Lord! In addition to them, I also remember our dear faithful laymen associated with our mission, our Oblates, the Sisters of the Holy Redeemer and the Religious Congregations that are part of our Redemptorist Family.

May our Mother of Perpetual Help and our Saints, Martyrs, Blessed and Venerables help us prepare for our final encounter in the glory of the Lord.

P. Rogerio Gomes , C Ss.R.
Superior General
Rome, November 2, 2022