Daily Devotional • November 2
All Souls’ Day
A Reading from 1 Corinthians 15:50-58
50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters,* is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die,* but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
55 ‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved,* be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.
Meditation
This is the third and final day of what I call a mini-Triduum, the first being All Hallow’s Eve, the second being All Saints Day, and now, All Souls Day. When considered in light of the Great Triduum, today would be the sister of Holy Saturday, the day Jesus descended to the dead and preached to all the long dead souls that were there restlessly waiting.
In 2004, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. The last time they had done so was in 1918. I was told by a diehard Red Sox fan that as people thronged into Boston to celebrate, the place many of them went was the cemetery. Sons and daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren brought radios and played back the final moments of the game for their long dead relatives who had restlessly waited for this moment, but didn’t live to witness the final victory.
Many of us are living with the separation of death. We may have lost a parent, a grandparent, a friend, or a child. It may be that the pain of the separation in death is made all the more painful by the awareness that it followed a separation in life. Perhaps there was a reunion or a reconciliation for which we restlessly waited, but never materialized.
Yet, when that great trumpet sounds, all separations shall crumble like the walls of Jericho. Not only will our earthly separations cease to divide — Jews or Greeks, males or females, even Yankees fans or Red Socks fans — but the great separation of the living and the dead will be no more. Death has been swallowed up and on that great last day, the place where we should all go to celebrate — if we are not there already — is the cemetery where, Lord willing, we may meet once more those for whom we have been restlessly waiting to embrace.
Sarah Cornwell is a laywoman and an associate of the Eastern Province of the Community of St. Mary. She and her husband have seven children and they live in Wheaton, Illinois.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
Bible and Common Prayer Book Society, Red Bank, New Jersey
The Diocese of Karongi – Eglise Anglicane du Rwanda