The Sunday vision, the vision of the risen Lord, grows bigger and bigger. We are reminded in these days in which the year runs out and the thought of those who have departed this life, this thought of death, enters into our minds, reminded of St. John's vision of the Lord on the Sunday, on the eighth day, the one who has enthroned among the seven campuses and who turns to him He says, don't be afraid. I am the first and the last. And I died, and behold, I live in endless ages.

[01:09]

And I have the keys of death and of the great. That is in these Masses of Sun on these Sundays. It is the theme in many ways. As, for example, tomorrow we read the Gospel, the fourth chapter of St. John, about our Lord healing and the song of the King's servant who is here today. You feel we see the one at this time of the harvest, this time of fall, when the sickle goes and grapes are being cut and are being gathered. We are reminded of the one who ascended.

[02:11]

But what does it mean? But that he first descended into the lower parts of the earth. the netherworld, who he descended, he it is who ascended also above all the heavens, that he might bring everything to completion. That great, tremendous kingdom that unfolds in these last Sundays and weeks of the ecclesiastical year, the kingdom of God, the feast of Christ the King, the feast of all saints, and also the commemoration of all the souls departed in the sign of faith. During these days we see, we catch a glimpse of this all-embracing fullness. And that is the reason why also in these days I desperately try to write a chronicle for All Souls' Day.

[03:24]

That is the thoughts that this moment are uppermost in my mind. And of these, especially then, how we take a part in this foolishness and are actually a part of this foolishness. And that's then, again, focused more specifically on our relation to those who have departed this life with a sign of faith and sleep in the sleep of peace, as we express it. What is our relation to those who have departed this life? Just a few days ago, we were reminded of it in the Feast of St. Francis of Francis Medina, who is buried here in our little cemetery. then naturally always the memory of our brother Christopher comes up again.

[04:30]

And I think we realize how close the relation is also after death between those who live on here and those who have been called into Abraham's bosom. We all form one community, and death does not really and truly separate us. Death certainly is a judgment. Death is a moment where all false pretenses and all fake relations are believed. Men do all kinds of tricks and things in order to hide their true faces, especially also in the case and in the moment of death.

[05:33]

But therefore, rituals and customs are being observed, duly observed, with great accuracy observed, because sometimes it is such an apparatus which saves many an embarrassment and, as I say, provides a kind of facade. But anybody who assists at a funeral is able, is not deceived, is able to distinguish the truth from the gesture. Death is too strong and cannot be hidden by a witch. Death is a judge also in this way, that that moment we realize more what our true relation has been to the one who has left this life.

[06:42]

if he was only in need of ourselves, then we may be inconsolable. Then a tremendous depression may fall upon us, and we may be drowned in such a sorrow that even refuses to be consoled. But if our relation was the relation of true, true personal love. Now, we know it from our experience that personal love is beyond space and time. It's not bound to it. The truly hearts meet. in that what Shakespeare calls so beautifully, the marriage of true minds, then we realize that love is not time's fool.

[07:54]

That love wants, as we have said before, eternity. And it has the pledge of eternal life in it. It is something which death, the death, the bodily separation imposed by death, cannot kill it, does not end. But it continues, and the inner rapport continues. But naturally one could ask oneself, and one should ask, Now this kind of grapple, which is based on no really deep personal love, is it not limited to an elite? How few relatively, how few human beings are privileged to experience such a relationship.

[09:06]

But the message of All Souls Day is different. The message of the church is different. Not directed to an event. And now aristocracy of personal relations. But to all the disease, All Souls Day proclaims the solidarity between all those who live in the faith of Christ here on earth and those who have gone before us in the sign of that same faith. Why? Because there the basis, the bonds that binds us together is not in all the human life, which, even if it is the most noble, still remains always a promise that cannot be fulfilled.

[10:18]

Not that is the bond, but it is another love, divine love, given for God by the Son of our Heavenly Father, who became man. And gave us, died for us, laid down his life for us as for his greatness. And a greater love nobody has. That love, that is the basis of our relation to those who have gone before us in the sign of faith. Still, this love, quite a lot, has no one. But the Son of God made man who gave, loved us until the end, giving us life for us, that we may live.

[11:22]

Still, the one who in this way gave us, put us, as it were, on a basis which truly reaches out beyond the grave, and for which this separation between the living and the dead is so different and so positive, not negative, positive. He still, when he manifests at the moments in his life where he manifested to us the mystery of this, let us say the mystery of his resurrection, or let us better say the mystery of the new life that all those have who believe in him.

[12:26]

He did it, he bound them, he placed them, always into the setting of the noble forms of human love. These forms of human love, which in the natural life, in relation of man, form the firmest and most lasting bond, they are, I think, three. as one could mention. One is friendship. The other one is the relation between parents and children. And the third, the relation between man and woman. And while reading and meditating a little, Holy Scripture, and especially the Gospel of St.

[13:31]

John, in these last days. That struck me. And that is what I just wanted to share with you this evening. That the Lord takes the frame, let's say, the setting of friendship, the setting of parental attachment and love, and the setting of love between woman and man. as the starting point, let's say, the points where he starts in order to, through the influence of his teaching and of his spirit, to lift up this noble form of human life and to bring it to its fulfillment in that fullness of life, that his love, in which he loves us until the end, that means the love of the crops, gives to us.

[14:43]

There is first, you all are familiar with it, there is the 11th chapter in the Gospel of St. John. In this 11th chapter, our Lord enters, as you know, his court, By the sisters. To call. To their aid. Because Lazarus. Their brother. Is critically ill. Now there is. A setting of friction. Because he. The son of God. Made man. And that St. George. Emphasizes. Again and again, the Son of God made man rejoice. He loved to go to these three. And while they, as Holy Scripture says, as St.

[15:45]

John says, while they made a feast for him, he rejoiced in the comfort that human friendship gives to Lazarus, Martha, and Mir. And so when the message comes that Lazarus, his friend, is critically ill, that's the way St. John says, and that's the way our Lord himself says, our friend Lazarus is dead, he says. So these three, Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, he loved them, said John, says. And they sang to him. And then he says, and there it's a beautiful thing, that in the connection with the raising of Lazarus from the tomb,

[16:56]

That language is really coined by our Lord, which from then on determines our Christian way of speaking about death. Because when they tell him, the Lord says, this sickness is not unto death. It is to the glory of God. Lazarus is not dead. He's fallen asleep, and I shall go and awaken him from sleep. And that is the word which then is taken up by the church, by all Christians, until when they speak about a Christian death, It is, as they call it, a falling asleep, dormitio, falling asleep, a word which is not used in the East only for the falling asleep of Our Lady, but commonly, koimesis, is the word for death, falling asleep.

[18:16]

And being dead, to sleep, The dead, those who are sleeping. The place where they are interred, where they are buried, they call it material. The cemetery. The sleeping place. And there the Lord, here in this context, he coins that word. His friend is dead. He is asleep. I come and I shall awaken him. But still he lets him die. Why? Because he shows the glory of God, the glory of the Father, through and in the power of the resurrection. Why?

[19:19]

Because it is the resurrection which does not hide away death, which does not prevent death, which asserts the reality of death. But then out of this reality of death and uses, as it were, this reality of death to manifest a love that is stronger than death. Manifest a love that is stronger than And that is what he wants to show here in this beautiful city of French. He goes there. He enters the house. He meets those who are so close to him. And he sees the place which so often has been for him a place of comfort and of joy. And he sees it all in drowned in song. And he himself, he groaned in his spirit.

[20:28]

Or as we would say, he was shaken into his very death. He entered into that soul. He took part in the soul. He showed that death. He wept. And the Jews themselves say, oh, see how he loved his friend. He weeps over him. And, of course, out of that mouth is a superficial statement, but still it is full of saving depth. He is the one who lays down his life for his friend And here he takes part and takes upon himself the sorrow of death. As he has tasted the sweetness of human friendship, so he also tastes the bitterness of the separation.

[21:37]

And then out of that, as the Gospel of St. John indicates again so beautifully, he lifts up his eyes high up the gospel says, the emphasis on that elevation, lifting up his eyes higher, and he says, Father, I thank you because you have heard my prayer. Triumphantly, the faith in the resurrection is active in rest justification Perhaps it would better be to speak of that when the Lord characterizes himself and he says, I am the resurrection and the life. And those who believe in me shall not, cannot die forever.

[22:40]

Those who believe in me cannot die forever. Might be good in this connection to translate the word, I am the resurrection. In the active sense, I am the resuscitation. I am the one, the great awakener, who awakens those who have fallen asleep. That is the fulfillment of his relation to his faith. And he states it so beautifully in opposition to Martha's faith. Martha's, one can say, rabbinic faith. Yes, my Lord, I know he will rise again on the last day. And then our Lord meets that earth and says, No, I am the resurrection and the life.

[23:44]

And the one who believes in me can never die. So he makes that life, the risen life, as it were, an actual presence at this moment. And that it is what he confirms by that raising Lazarus at this moment out of it. So what he indicates, what the Lord indicates here, in this setting of friendship. Friendship, a love that one does not want to die. And in this setting, he puts it, he lifts it up, puts it on a different basis. He shows the fulfillment. He himself heals the frame. who lays down his life for his friends. And he then is the resuscitation, their resuscitation. And that is not a promise for a faraway future, but that is a present reality.

[24:54]

The one who believes in me can never die. He has eternal life. And that, as you know, is one of the great points in the whole Gospel of St. John. The message of the Lord is this. It is the will of the Father that those who believe have eternity. Who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternity. So that, therefore, is the basis on which, then, that bond which noble love and noble love of friendship has created, and which already here, one can say, on the natural plane, is not bound to space and time, where it finds its good fit. So it is this supernatural friendship which keeps, as it were, the living contact between those who live here on earth and those who have preceded us in the sign of faith and have fallen asleep in the Lord.

[26:15]

That is the reason why in monasteries where this supernatural friendship is the theme, that there the living and the deceased are in close contact. When I was a young novice there in Mariella, I already noticed that, my great joy. There was the Basilica, And why now, at the time when I was there, now the cemetery is somewhere else, but the old cemetery of the old monks, there was the door out of the south side of the basilica, and right there is the set. The cemetery and the church, the dog's day, are virtually our world. The cemetery belongs to the whole, and that's a living unit. to the ground in which the monastic community lives. And you know very well what a tremendous attention and emphasis is given in the monastic life to the remembrance of the deceased, not only their remembrance, the expression of that constant bond which is there, which is maintained as a living bond, maintained

[27:38]

in the offering of the Holy Sacrifice. Who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, he has eternal life. And then I can remember, too, how it struck me as a completely new idea. Once Father Albert, the novice master, explained, yes, and when we sing it at the mass, sung to, sung to, sung to, holy, holy, holy, the Lord God said, And heaven and earth, heaven and earth are full of his glory. And with the angels, and then angels, archangels, we sing this. They are also the souls of the departed are present. Those who are commemorated at this mass join, as it were, in the sanctus. So there is around the altar the table of communion where the flesh and the blood of the Lord is given, where he rises for us, the one who has died for us, where that meal of friendship is celebrated, where that divine hospitality is practiced.

[28:56]

There is the place where our living contact with those who have received it in the sight of faith is again and again a true, real, true reality. Then there is, we have another framework setting, and that is on the cross. When our Lord was about to give his trial in his spirit, also a positive word of what really this death means in the context of the Gospel of St. George. where this is the moment in which the Father is glorified and the Son, the being lifted up on the cross. But from this heavenly throne as we are of the cross, from this climax, the one who rules from the cross, there turns to his mother, turns to his father,

[30:05]

There is the other love, the love which in the Old Testament is called the Raham, Raham, Rahamim, which is derived from the word we speak in Latin, the Mishra, Mishra is a record here. Mishra is a record here. The heart of mercy. Raham means the womb. Rahamim are the feelings. which the tender feelings of the love that only a mother can have and feel for her son, that only the son can feel for the mother. This feeling in which the whole being is, becomes a part. The one who has taken upon herself death that the joy may be hers to bring a man into this world.

[31:08]

But that in this setting, this relation, our Lord, the son who dies, turns to his mother, says, Woman, behold your son. Again we see how this life maybe the greatest, the deepest, the most tender love among human beings. How there it is, taken up by the word made flesh, turning to his mother, he says, woman, behold your son. It is a word which at the same time is a yes to his death. And at the same time, a yes to that life which now pours forth from the cross through Israel. There is the dance of the soldier and it pierces the heart and blood and water pour forth.

[32:16]

The two sacraments of life, baptism, rebirth, and the Eucharist the daily feeding, the daily restoring of our supernatural spiritual life energy. There he turns to his mother. Behold your son, pointing to St. John. A new relation has been established. Who is my mother? All those who do the will of the Father. They are to me mother and brother and sister. So the Lord takes up this beautiful, one may say, power, dignity of the wahami, of that love of the parents for the children, of the children for the parents. Family love. He takes it up. And he puts it as it were.

[33:19]

Into the will of the father. The will of the father. The gift of the whole human family. Manifested to us on the cross. He has sent his son. To lay down his life for us. And we may become the children of this heavenly father. All united in a family. So where the greatest of all losses, where the sword pierces the mother's heart, it is for the resurrection of me. Then comes the third one, just indicating it. There we have that we have after the resurrection. When the risen Lord meets Mary Magdalene, And Mary Magdalene loves the Lord. She loves the Lord also in and with the way in which the woman loves the man.

[34:30]

But I mean here in a deep sense, not in the sense of concupiscence in the lower sense of the flesh. But her heart still is the heart of a woman. And she shows it. She shows it at the moment of her Lord's death. She shows it when she stands at the tomb. And she looks down. Where have they put my Lord? Her Lord is identical with his body. Where have they put my Lord? And there she looks. She looks for the body of the Lord. She weeps the tears of that sorrow with this separation. The loss of his bodily presence imposes upon her. But then the Lord meets her.

[35:33]

Miriam, he says, the word of love. And if the evangelist puts it in that way, repeats the word that he has spoken so often, that sweet sound that she immediately, the woman, the loving woman, recognizes, and which she answers. But with this answer of loving, reverence, Rabboni, my master, and again that same sound, Is there a gospel? Because these are deep, tender, beautiful, human, truly human relations between Mary Magdalene and the Son of God made man. But then he takes that, lifts it up, into, directs the eyes which were looking into the tomb, under the sway of that human love.

[36:39]

Look up. Don't keep me here. I must ascend to my father and to your father. And so she sends her out and she makes her the deacons of the glad tidings of the resurrection to the apostles. So in this way again, He uses the satiety of that human love between woman and man in the deepest and most noble sense, lifts it up, does not destroy it, not destroy it, but lifts it up to something that is really fulfillment. So I only wanted to put that to your consideration. to see that our relation then to those who have departed this life, that relation which already here on earth and on a human level shows at once eternity, true friendship, true parental love, and the true love between man and woman.

[38:01]

that deep spiritual love, that that is fulfilled in the one who is the resurrection and the life, who lays down his life for his friends, and whom all those who do the will of the Father are mother and brother to. and sister, and who then prepares for himself his bride, the new Jerusalem, and he, the Lamb, will be her light, and the marriage feast of the Lamb will be the feast of heaven.

[38:46]

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