Scripture Reflections
My Great-Aunt Margaret passed away this past week. She was 104. That’s a lot of life.
Aunt Margaret lived in England, and was, in fact, the paradigm of an English woman. I once went to visit her when I was in college; I knocked on the door of the flat in Wimbledon where she lived, and the first words out of her mouth were, “Oh, it’s so lovely to see you. Would you like some tea and crumpets?” I had no idea what a crumpet was, but I definitely wanted one. It was delicious.
She was 8 years old when Wall Street crashed and the Great Depression took hold of the world. She saw the rise of totalitarianism and came of age when Germany invaded Poland. She always spoke fondly of how lovely it was to have so many servicemen in dreamy uniforms around as she worked as a typist in London during “The War,” but this talking point was really her way of focusing on the good in the face of what was, in point of fact, the deeply traumatizing experience of The Blitz, as the London she knew and loved was reduced to rubble, along with many of her loved ones.
Though raised Catholic, Aunt Margaret lost her faith during World War II. It was a very honest reaction to what she saw around her. She couldn’t understand how a good God could allow such horrors, and so became an agnostic. It didn’t seem to her that a good God could possibly be directing things. And if he did exist, she didn’t much care to know him, as he couldn’t be that good or that powerful, and he clearly didn’t care much about her and her loved ones. “Is he mad at me?” she would often ask toyingly.
In her later years, Aunt Margaret’s heart softened toward God. The wisdom of age took hold, and she was ready to make peace with the God she’d begrudged for so long. I had the privilege of returning to visit her again, this time as a priest. I invited her back to the sacramental life of the Church, and we spoke at length of the problem of evil, and God’s response to it — a response of humble sacrificial love, coming off of his pedestal to suffer with us and for us — something not thoroughly understandable but also undeniably loving, caring and definitely not aloof.
Her local parish brought her Communion regularly during the final years of her life. And she was content to be nourished by the Bread of Life that was somehow healing her heart and offering her a peace that this world could only ever offer in a limping way.
“I will not reject anyone who comes to me,” we hear Christ say in the suggested readings for this Sunday, on which we commemorate the souls of all the faithful departed, “because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day.” (John 6:37-39 NAB)
Our Lord desires to raise all those who humble themselves to come to him. The complexity of life often makes that humble journey quite a difficult one for us to open our hearts to in truth. All Souls Day is one on which the Universal Church recognizes the ginger sanctity of that tender place of each soul’s encounter with the Living God — the recognition of their need for a Savior.
And so we pray for the faithful departed, offering our own prayers and sacrifices that every last “blood clot” that might block the arteries of grace in our loved ones, and even in our enemies, might be dissolved — that their purgation be rendered complete so that every last encumbrance of sin and doubt and hardness of heart picked up in this “valley of tears” (cf. Psalm 84:6) might roll away like so many raindrops along a downspout.
A good prayer for all of us this weekend, in which we remember and pray for our beloved dead, might be the Salve Regina — the Hail Holy Queen—which gives reference to Psalm 84, another good prayer with which to lift up our loved ones and perhaps soften our own hearts along our pilgrim way this week:
“How lovely your dwelling, O Lord of hosts! My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh cry out for the living God. As the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest to settle her young, My home is by your altars, Lord of hosts, my king and my God! Blessed are those who dwell in your house! They never cease to praise you. Blessed are those who find refuge in you, in their hearts are pilgrim roads. As they pass through the Valley of Baca [“tears” or “balsam trees”], they find spring water to drink. The early rain covers it with blessings.” (Psalm 84:2-7 NAB)
“Better one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. […] O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!” (Psalm 84:11, 13 NAB/ESV)
