Today, the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time is replaced by this commemoration of those who have died. In Hispanic cultures, today is the Day of the Dead, when many families make small altars called ofrendas. On them are placed pictures and other “relics” of deceased family members, traditional foods, skulls or skeletons, and so on. This tradition helps families stay connected with their ancestors, celebrate their lives, and see death as part of life. Liturgically, today’s commemoration, and yesterday’s Feast of All Saints, does that for us. These feast days connect us not only to those we personally have known and lost, but also with those we know and want to remember through the traditions of our Catholic faith. It’s a big family!
But there is another death we remember today, that of Jesus of Nazareth — the death that gives meaning to all the other deaths and to our own future death. Our second reading is from Romans 6:3-9. In it, St. Paul says that “we were baptized into his [Jesus’s] death … [and] buried with him … so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.” In other words, if through baptism we are joined with Christ, it is the Christ who didn’t stay dead but rose and is still the life-giving spirit (1 Cor. 15:45) today and evermore. When dead, we are received into this Risen Christ.
Two other pieces of this important passage from Romans calls us to meditation today: First, Paul says this rising with Christ only happens if we have grown into union with him as our old self, our sinful self, no longer enslaves us (vs. 5-6). How are we doing with this? And second, today it is expected that we may feel sad as we remember those we have loved but who have finished their historical existence. Some of us also may feel anxious about whether our own faithful departed have entered full union with God. But as St. Paul says, “A dead person is absolved from sin.” It is not our sinful selves that live in the Risen Christ but the selves we have patterned on Christ. These Christ-like selves are taken into the Risen Christ, and through Him re-presented eternally to his Father and to the world. We remember today not the faults and sins of deceased persons but the goodness in them, goodness which we saw imperfectly but that God sees so clearly. All these profound faith-based ideas from St. Paul are the spiritual perspective from which we commemorate the faithful departed today.
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia
The post November 2, Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, Ofrenda: a Sunday Scriptures blog first appeared on Sisters of the Precious Blood.