‘None of us gets out alive,’ Bishop Martin preaches on All Souls’ Day
Bishop Michael Martin offered Mass for All Souls’ Day Nov. 2 at St. Patrick Cathedral in Charlotte.
CHARLOTTE — All Souls’ Day is a time to pray for our deceased loved ones and remember that we too will die, Bishop Michael Martin preached on All Souls’ Day.
During his homily for the feast day Mass at St. Patrick Cathedral Nov. 2, Bishop Martin lamented the tendency “to shy away from anything associated with death.”
Denying the reality of death is becoming more prevalent in today’s culture, he said. People no longer want to talk about death or arrange funerals for their loved ones.
“So far do we want to distance ourselves from anything associated with death that we can’t even say funeral,” he said.
This cultural reticence has led to a growing popularity in so-called “celebrations of life” services rather than funerals, Bishop Martin said.
“If you would like a funeral Mass celebrated, you better make it very, very clear to your children,” he told the congregation. “Because if you leave it to them, there might be a pretty good chance that you too will forego a funeral ritual for the sake of a ‘celebration of life.’”
These celebrations focus more on the life of the deceased and “not about celebrating the risen life of Christ,” the bishop said.
That ignores our sinfulness and the need for our salvation, he said. “The more we acknowledge the truth of death, the more we have to acknowledge the brokenness of the human condition – that our world is not right, it’s not the way it should be.”
“I’m not … some morose person. I’m not looking forward to my own death,” he said. “But I try regularly to not fear it and to recognize it as a step in my life that is part of the broken human condition that needs to be embraced and acknowledged and recognized for what it is.”
We all must face up to our brokenness, the bishop said. We must “first and foremost acknowledge: ‘My life is broken. I will die. I'm dying every day. And I need resurrection and that only comes from the One.’”
Death is a fact of life that we cannot avoid, he reiterated. “Better for us to acknowledge that honestly today, own it, and … celebrate the truth that death is real, and that we place ourselves and our deceased loved ones in the hands of a merciful God who has also experienced that very death.”
All Souls’ Day is not only a day to remember and pray for all those who have died, the bishop said, but an opportunity to remember “that none of us gets out alive. That we all will die. … And because I'm going to die, I have to say to myself: ‘Am I living this life properly, in preparation for that moment?’
“We’re all headed to the same place,” he said. “The question is, through that door, what will be the answer on the other side?”
— Patricia L. Guilfoyle