November 2, 2025 John 6: 37-40 Today we celebrate the Feast of All Souls, recalling and praying for all our beloved departed ones. Our Gospel is part of Jesus’ Eucharistic discourse and appears directly after the account of the miracle of the loaves. This year this feast falls on a Sunday which happens infrequently – about every seven years and, in many ways, this timing is a blessing. Very often when the Liturgy calls for Scripture readings about those who have died, we are grieving a particular person at his or her funeral, and that person is main focus of our reflection and our prayer. However, today we can consider a larger picture. According to the liturgical guidelines for All Souls Day, on this feast there is freedom in the choice of the day’s readings. I have selected a few, recalling some of Jesus’ additional teachings about eternal life which can assist us in our understanding and appreciation of death as new life. Yesterday we imagined the multitude of holy ones, our own Saints. Today we remember and enter into the reality of those who have died and are perhaps still awaiting the opening of heaven’s gates on their behalf. […]