In today’s Gospel, Jesus is surrounded by rulers who cause people’s suffering and death. The rulers struggle to love people. They may show temporary love while at the same time they usually threaten people with eternal damnation. Jesus tells those same people, “I will not reject anyone.” Jesus consistently shows eternal love and encourages people with eternal life.
Does eternal life refer only to the hereafter? Can it also refer to the herebefore, and to all that’s in between? Has life always been, and will life always be? How can we conceive of it otherwise? The mystery of life will always fascinate us. It’s a miracle. Life reveals all that is so very delicate and yet so very enduring. We try to make sense of it. We consider Adam and Eve and hydrogen helium interactions, as we also consider heaven and hell and black holes too, as well as a past and a future which we imagine as idyllic and/or dystopian. We ponder life’s possible beginnings as well as death’s potential endings while we live within their eternal weave. Every once and awhile the seamlessness of the weave is especially apparent. Once, while I was working as a live-in volunteer at a homeless shelter a man, not so very old and living on the street, was quite sick. He refused to go to a hospital. He agreed to come stay with us. His decline over the next couple of weeks was steady and rather difficult. He spoke often of regrets; love lost, and love never given. He mourned his own passing and felt sure no one else would mourn him, or even remember him. There was, providentially so, a woman in the neighborhood who was happily pregnant. In the flow of the beginnings and endings that make for the mystery and miracle of eternal life and eternal love, on the same day we held Ralph as he died, little Shantell was placed in the arms of her mother. Everyone in the community did their best to love them both and so, years later, they live on.
“My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird … to be given a mind and a heart ,,, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy … telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.” (My Work is Loving the world – Mary Oliver)
Prayer: Dear Spirit, we thank you for the love poured out into our hearts.
Question: Who are the faithful departed who have eternal life because of the love we shared?
November 2, 2014 Gospel John 6:37-40 All Souls Day – Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed
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