Catholic nations (mostly in Europe and Latin America) all over the world commemorate All Saints’ Day today and All Souls’ Day tomorrow. It is the universal church’s way of reminding everyone of our mortality. While All Saint’s Day should make us remember our favorite saints (two favorites of mine is St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina and St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei) however there are countless or nameless saints who are buried in our cemeteries. These people may have lived the lives of saints, but they were never recognized as such. But nonetheless, their rewards are in heaven.
One of my favorite quotations comes from St. Pio, “You pray, you hope and you don’t worry”. This is a quote for those who live a healthy spiritual life like the “Anawims” around us who leave their lives in the hands of God. It is through the eyes of faith given no less by God the Father himself that we have come to know and love because we know he loves us dearly. So if our heart knows this… why should we worry about life?
Another quote from St. Josemaria Escriva says, “In order to love and serve God, it is not necessary to do extraordinary things. Christ asks all men without exception to be perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect (Matt.5:48). For the great majority of men, to be holy consists of sanctifying their work, to sanctify themselves in their work, to sanctify others with work, and also to find God on the road of their life.” Indeed, we can find God not just inside the church, but in our daily work, regardless of our status in life.
I started with these two quotations about our Catholic faith in order to give you an idea of the importance of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day. While I was in Lourdes last week, I contemplated on the recent tragedy that happened two weeks ago to the Ponce family in Talisay City, Cebu where a deranged husband Emmanuel killed his wife Melinda and his two daughters and his only son, including their househelp, leaving only his favorite 13-year-old daughter to live, before he turned his .45 caliber gun on his temple. When that tragedy was headline news, the question we all asked is why God?
Perhaps as we walk around the graves where our loved ones are buried, you will also see the names of those who have gone ahead. Looking at the year of birth and the time of death, you will notice that many of them have died so young, which brings us to ask once more… why God do you allow those who are so young to die?
We will never know the answer to such a question if we think in human terms. But if we think the way God thinks, perhaps we might find some answers especially when we learn to accept the truth that God loves us so much, he sent his only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ into our world to be one with us to save us from our sinful selves. Only then can we have a better understanding of life… that whether we like it or not, life in our present human frailty cannot be perfected unless we come into that life-changing reality called death, which is the beginning of our afterlife.
This brings me to a quotation that we got from the recently departed digital age icon, Steve Jobs, who spoke during a commencement address in Stanford University in 2005. Steve Jobs spoke just after his delicate operation, “This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And it is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other peoples’ thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Unfortunately, despite his immense fortune, Steve Jobs didn’t get a few more decades, he only got a few more months. All he did was secondary!
So the big question you should ask yourself in the mirror, are you going to prepare for your life today, pursuing a dream which would make you materially richer? What in effect Steve Jobs was saying can be found in the Bible in Mark 8:36 when our Lord Jesus Christ said, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?”
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