My Prayer Book And Devotion.

The Will of God

It is God's plan that all will be saved and share with him eternal life. Traditionally, this is the Feast of All Souls. In Mexico this is the Day of the Dead. Families will pack a picnic of the favorite foods of the loved ones who are dead and the family will gather at the cemetery and celebrate the lives of those who have gone before. My grandmother died on November 2, and I have always thought that it meant that she was with God. I have never known anyone who lived a life closer to God than she did. Yesterday was the feast of All Saints, and today of All Souls, and we are the saints in training. All three combine in what we call the "communion of saints." We say we believe in this when we pray the creed. We really don't know what happens after death in any concrete way because eternity is mystery and we can't solve it. Is there an in between state from death to heaven? Who knows? We believe that Jesus opened the gates of heaven when he sacrificed himself on the cross. What happened to all those saints who had died before him? Abraham, Moses, David, Joseph and John the Baptist all predeceased Jesus. Where were they? Again, in the Apostles' Creed, we say that after his death, Jesus descended to the dead and then rose to judge the living and the dead. This seems to infer that there is somewhere. We are encouraged to pray for the dead because of this unknown and this is the day that has been chosen to remind us to do so.