Sermon on the Ranch with Fr. Bryce Lungren
(November 2nd Sunday Homily)
Readings:
Reading 1 — Wisdom 3:1-9
Psalm — Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6
Reading 2 — Romans 5:5-11
Gospel — Matthew 25:34
Transcript:
There’s an option at funeral masses, you can either wear white vestments or violet vestments, even black vestments, but I pretty much always just wear white vestments. Anyway, violet is an option, so I’m violet today and it’s an interesting color in the liturgical life.
We generally think of it as being penitential, right? We think of Lent, we wear violet and in the sacrament of confession, we wear a violet stole. Advent as well. But it’s also a color of royalty. I don’t think of it as, I think it makes sense, but in the Church, you don’t think about that too much necessarily.
Think about when our Lord was crucified, after they scourged him and things like that, Mark’s Gospel says that they placed a purple cloak over him, you know, kind of hail King of the Jews stuff. Purple, violet is a color of royalty, and really even in the Church, it kind of has that twofold dimension, at least in the funeral ceremony.
Today on All Souls Day this is the liturgy for a funeral, more or less. And so, just as violet has the two-fold of being in one sense royalty and in another sense penitential, I would also say that death kind of has that two-fold component as well. Like, really as Christians, we hold death up, as a means to our salvation.
We also recognize it as a the result of sin. Sin leads to death. That’s how it entered the world. But again, we hold it up. The crucifix. Here’s a man who is hung on the cross and has died. We hold that up in honor. Just an interesting dynamic that kind of follows the same logic as the color purple. So anyway, I think of that today. Let’s just go first to the dignity of death.
Let’s just think of that reality that our Lord, it is through his death that we are saved. We hold that up in high regard, but that’s not just a distant thing that we look upon. We enter into that mystery primarily through our baptism. Think of St. Paul today. He really highlights this, drives this home in his letter to the Romans. He first says, are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
He goes on, if then we who have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. So death doesn’t have the last word. We know that. Jesus’ own death leads to the resurrection. It’s the only way forward. So it’s the same in our baptism. We’ve died with Christ, not the end of the story. We’ve also risen with him. Those who have died with Christ shall also live with him.
That’s the mystery of our faith that we participate in all throughout our life, that this dying to self leads to life in Christ. And it’s not just a magic trick, right? We have to choose to live out of that. Our Lord highlights that today. He says, for this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. We see with faith, like we believe in our Lord.
We believe that we have died with him and rose with new life. We now put off the old man and live to the new man. Okay, that’s some of the mystery and the beauty of death in our life. The curse has become the remedy. So do we live out of that, I think is one question that the Mass setting like this put in front of us. Do I live out of the fact that I have been reborn, that I have spiritually died and spiritually risen with Christ? Okay, that’s where life happens.
That’s where life begins. We highlight it. We highlight death. It’s got a good component in our life. We also know that the other side of the sword is that it stings. Death stings. It’s not natural for us to die, for others in our lives to die. There’s that component to it as well. That’s where the of the penitential side of dying really comes into action.
Both the color violet, and as well as the month of November is dedicated to the faithful departed, and not just remembering them, praying for them. We pray for our brothers and sisters who have died. So to just hone in on that a little bit, and how can we kind of engage that, take advantage of this month of helping our brothers and sisters on their journey to heaven. First, just to clarify, what goes on, what happens at our death?
We die, we receive our particular judgment. We meet the Father and we are judged. Our lives are judged. And it goes, lambs on the right, goats on the left. On the right you head to heaven, on the left you head to hell. That’s a reality that we choose, we make those decisions throughout our life. Now God and his just judgment gives us what we’ve chosen, one way or another. Those are the two roads at the end of our life.
Now, on the road to heaven, there’s a journey there, and along that journey is purgatory. Purgatory is a reality and a teaching of Christianity. Only things that are totally clean can enter into heaven. All of us might not be totally there at the time of our life, but we still die in friendship with God.
That’s the language that the Church uses. We’re in friendship with God, though my heart may not be perfectly purified. Purgatory is a step on that road to help in that purification process so that we can freely, wholeheartedly enter into heaven. Now the deal with that is that once we’ve died, we can no longer help merit our own sanctification. We can no longer do good works to help purify our heart.
So hence the need for us, the brothers and sisters of those who are in purgatory, to intercede on their behalf, to help further along that process, help them in that process. There’s the call for prayers and even penance on our part for the faithful departed. November highlights that reality. I would put it in our court too, because that’s the beauty of this day falling on Sunday, that we can really kind of get into this mystery of our faith.
We can get creative in our prayers and penitence for our faithful departed. We can also do what the Church says. First one, going to Mass. If you listen in to prayers of Mass, there’s a lot of prayers for our brothers and sisters who have died in Christ, on their journey to heaven. Every time we go to Mass, we’re praying for the faithful departed. It’s good to engage that mystery.
Another one, have a Mass offered for someone who’s died. Beautiful. This is a high prayer. This is the representation of our Lord’s own death and His resurrection. No greater prayer than that to offer on behalf of our brothers and sisters who have died. The other one, and maybe this is how we can string out the month of November, is we can gain indulgences. I’ve used a lot of unpopular words here, merit, indulgences, careful throwing those around in this world, but we still believe them, right?
We can still help merit our sanctification. We can still gain indulgences for ourselves and for our brothers and sisters who have died. How we do that? Plenary indulgence, it’s a total remission of the temporal punishment due to sin. We can offer that on behalf of our brothers and sisters in heaven, in purgatory. You can look into that a little bit, but for the first eight days of November we can gain a plenary indulgence. Part of those requirements, visiting a cemetery, praying for the faithful departed. That’s just beautiful. It’s Catholic. That’s what we do. We’re still in communion and can intercede on each other’s behalf. Just some concrete ways that we can really pray intentionally for our brothers and sisters. The rest of November, we can gain partial indulgences. Just good to kind of look that stuff up, these mysteries and these aspects of our faith.
That’s the beauty of November 2nd happening on Sunday. It puts it in front of us. We get to renew it. Now let’s take advantage of this month of November to pray for the faithfully departed in our lives and throughout the world. The more souls we get from Purgatory to Heaven, the stronger is the body of Christ, even the body of Christ here on Earth. It benefits us as well. It’s just beautiful. Death has that dual dynamic to it.
In one sense we highlight it as the means of salvation and the next sense it has the steam. It has the penitential aspect to it. We just kind of live in that dynamic, that little tension that we experience in this life. We first just hold up the dignity of death that those who have died in Christ, all of us in our baptism, we now live with Christ. Now we take that the next step and also pray intentionally for our faithful departed.
