Each year we pause the regular cycle of our liturgical calendar to remember, honor and pray for the dead. Families visit and decorate graves, the faithful gather for Mass in cemeteries and we light a candle or offer a Mass, calling on God to fulfill the promise of the resurrection for those we loved in this life, those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith.
Of course, we keep this solemn obligation out of devotion to and love of our ancestors, grateful for all that they have done to contribute to our lives. We know that even though they have passed from our midst, death has not totally separated us from them. We sense that connection in so many ways. But we also keep up this practice as a matter of enlightened self-interest, for we hope that someday after we have passed from this life, those who remain will do the same for us.
Those we pray for are referred to as “the poor souls.” They surely are poor, for just as they came into this life with nothing, they departed from it the same way. They have nothing, and are poor beggars asking God’s mercy so that they may share eternal life.
Pope Leo recently reminded us in his apostolic exhortation, “Dilexi Te,” that care of the poor is the pathway to Christian holiness. For it is in the poor that we meet God, who has revealed himself throughout history as having a preferential option for the poor.
The people he chose to make his own were slaves, whom he rescued from oppression and injustice. And as Jesus revealed, God’s plan is for all of humanity to have a place of the table of life in the Kingdom, marked by solidarity, fraternity and justice, where no one would be excluded.
This truth that holiness cannot be understood or lived apart from the demands to give priority to the poor should move us to pray for those who have passed beyond the curtain between time and eternity. But, it should also prompt our care of the poor on this side of that curtain, those in our very midst.
In other words, our care of the poor souls and our care for the poor in our midst are one and the same work. Our care of the homeless, the hungry, the forgotten, the child in the womb, the prisoner on death row, the poor and uneducated and, yes, in this moment, the refugee and the migrant are all part of what Jesus is doing and we are called to join him.
The metric for responding to these migrants cannot be based on the simple calculation that they violated a law in coming to or staying in our country, but that they are poor and in need, and we know that Jesus has been sent into the world to rescue them and include them in his kingdom of justice, fraternity and solidarity. God has always given preference to the poor.
Just as we join Jesus in the mission of saving the poor souls, so we are to join him in his work of making sure that all on this side of that eternal curtain are included and saved. We cannot pretend to stand in solidarity with the poor souls who have died if we neglect to stand in solidarity with the poor souls who are alive and at our very doorstep.
In humility we need to accept that they are just like each of us; we are all beggars, unable to save ourselves.
The title of the pope’s exhortation, “Dilexi Te,” comes from the Book of Revelation, when the risen Lord Jesus speaks to the poor defenseless and vulnerable early Christian community, which has been told by the Roman government that they are not welcome and have no legal standing. He tells them, you have but little power, but that does not matter, because “I have loved you” — “dilexi te.”
So let us make these word of the risen Lord our own as we care for the poor on both sides of the curtain of earthly life. As we pray for the dead, let us also say to the poor in our midst, “you have little power, but that does not matter, because I have loved you.”
Saying these words is so consequential for our own salvation, for, as Pope Leo has reminded us, it will be our love of the poor that puts us on the path to holiness. And there we must remain.