November 6, 2025
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (All Souls) on November 2, 2025 at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chicago, IL. The Church provides many options for the readings on this day, but this homily is based on Wisdom 3:1-9; Psalm 23; Romans 5:5-11; and John 6:37-40.
November 2 is one of the most unique days of the liturgical year. We commemorate all of our beloved dead, including those whose names our written in our book of the dead and those pictured on our ofrenda in the commons. It’s a day of reliving the grief we feel because they no longer walk among us, but it’s also a day to celebrate that we remain connected to them for all time.
The Church has no specific set of readings designated for the Commemoration of the Faith Departed, the Feast of All Souls. Instead, we have the option to use any of the dozens of readings that the Church suggests for funerals. Today, we have chosen passages that reassure us of our “sure and certain hope” that everyone who has gone before us is united with God, and that we will eventually be reunited with them in heaven on the last day.
Let us take a moment to celebrate God’s eternal, merciful love.
“Amy” and “Brent” were a young couple. When they had been expecting their first child, Amy’s gynecologist told them the devastating news in the first trimester that the fetus was not viable. Following the gynecologist’s advice, they chose to end the pregnancy right then and there. But in the days and weeks afterwards, they felt terrible for terminating their baby’s life while it was still alive. They resolved to find a new gynecologist who would help them find other ways forward if, heaven forbid, they ever found themselves in a similar situation again. I met them when they were expecting their second child, after they had received terrible news in early December. The fetus’ heart was forming outside the body, and the child would not survive to term.
But this time, with the assistance of their new gynecologist, Amy and Brent made the excruciating choice recommended by Catholics: Amy would carry the child as long as it was alive. They learned that the child was a girl, and they gave her a name. Although they knew that they would never hold their daughter in this lifetime, they dreamed of her future, leading the other baby angels around heaven. Amy and Brent prayed that their daughter would have a strong heart, and their prayers were answered. She survived in utero months longer than expected, dying in late April at 32 weeks’ gestation when Amy went into premature labor.
Unquestionably, the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a priest was presiding over the tiny casket at the graveside service of Amy and Brent’s daughter. But despite the pain, Amy and Brent continue to affirm eight years later that they made the right choice in taking the time to bond with their daughter.
[Pause.] There is a phrase that we use a lot in the funeral prayers of the Church: “the sure and certain hope.” We have the sure and certain hope that God had a plan in giving Amy and Brent their beautiful daughter, even if it was for such a short time. We have the sure and certain hope that she is now in heaven, demonstrating how to love others as she was loved by her parents.
For the vast majority of the beloved dead we mourn today, we have a lot more joyful memories mixed in with our loss than Amy and Brent have in the memories of their daughter. Even in the face of the sure and certain hope of our eventual reunion with our beloved dead, we still have a whole host of other perplexing emotions. We’re overwhelmed with sadness. A lot of us question why God would design life in such a way that would involve so much heartbreak. Honestly, it is perfectly acceptable for us to occasionally shake our fists at God in anger, asking for an understanding that eludes us mere humans.
The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer probably said it best. He wrote: “There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve — even in pain — the authentic relationship…. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was… in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.”
Amy and Brent knew that they would never hold their daughter in this lifetime. And yet they chose a name for her: Hope. And as St. Paul declared in our second reading today, “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
We are coming into the final two months of the Jubilee Year that Pope Francis named the “Jubilee of Hope.” But what exactly is the virtue of hope? Hope is a combination of two things: it is both the desire for something, and the expectation to receive it. In a religious context, hope is the desire and the expectation to reach complete union with God.
Amy and Brent’s daughter brought them closer to one another and closer to God. And by their courageous decision to give her such love while she was with them, the three of them brought everyone they knew closer to God. Literally and figuratively, Amy and Brent’s love for one another had given life to Hope. Hope now lives in their hearts forever, and Hope will live forever with God.
As St. Paul wrote, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. ‘Those who have never been told of him shall see, and those who have never heard of him shall understand.’ ”
May the love of God, which surpasses all understanding, be with us today and always.