My grandfather was a World War II veteran. He had fought in the battle of Tobruk and participated in the liberation of Italy. He was wounded in the course of his service and wore the scars for the rest of his life. When he returned from the war, he joined an organisation for military veterans called the Memorable Order of Tin Hats (MOTH) which has been assisting military veterans since 1927.
As a teenager, visiting my grandparents during the holidays, I would occasionally attend a MOTH meeting with my grandfather. I was always struck how at the end of a short prayer service the names of the recently deceased were called out, and all the members would respond with a solemn “We will remember them.” And these moths did remember them, every year. Calling out their names was a powerful acting of remembering. Our Catholic celebration of ALL SOULS is also a powerful act of remembering, when we hold up to the Lord in prayer all of those whom we love but are no longer with us. I know that I will be remembering my grandparents and parents on this day, praying for them and thanking God for them.
However, I must admit to some bemusement at how Catholics in general are quite cavalier about this day, and its significance.
I spent 10 years working in a Soweto parish. Funerals there are a big thing. There is the reception of the body at the house the night before the funeral, a short prayer service in the morning at the home before the body is brought to church, a memorial program before mass, the requiem mass and then the burial. The family hire buses and then feeds not only those who came to the funeral but also anybody in the street or neighbourhood that turns up for the meal. A year later a tombstone is erected, with almost as much ceremony. This whole process costs families a huge amount in time, money and psychic energy. On the face of it there seems to be a great will to remember their loved one and give them an “honourable” farewell. Until it came to ALL SOULS Day.
Every year I would put on a special mass for all of those whom families have just bankrupted themselves for the funerals of their loved one, and virtually no-one came. The disjuncture between the funeral and the act of remembering them in faith has always puzzled me. I haven’t been here at St Martin de Porres long enough to discover what the quality of our own remembering is, but my hope is that on this day we will gather in prayer to honour those who have passed on, that we will write their names on our pious lists and place them before the altar of the Lord, and that we will spend a short time praying in the memorial garden and tending the final resting place of members of our loved ones who rest here at St Martin de Porres.
So please, if you have someone who has passed on whom you are remembering in your prayers, come to mass on Saturday. If you know of anyone whom over the past few years has had someone buried from our Church or whose family members ashes are interred here, invite them to come to mass on Saturday. And then come with them. Just as you were there to support them in their time of grieving, be with them now as remember them.
We will remember them.
