Reflection on today’s gospel 2

If you have not noticed yet, I have devoted my Sunday blog(s) to the readings of the church for as long as I continue to be a believer and my spirit continues to heed to the first commandment according to Mark 12:30.

I remember when I was growing up, in one of my catechism classes, my tutor usually referred to the month of November in a special way. Not because it is a month next to the festival celebrating the birth of Christ Jesus, but because it is a month of darkness as he nicknamed it. As I became more catechized in the Catholic doctrine, then I became more conscious of the way the month of November had been branded. Actually, the month of November is dedicated to praying for the departed souls. It starts with the feast of All Saints on the 1st, ensued by the memorial of All Souls on the 2nd, and other programmes continue in that sequence. The church having this month devoted particularly for the dead, we are often trapped in the illusion of depicting the month in a grisly sense given the darkness associated with death.

Back to today's reading in the gospel, we are reminded of the necessity to proclaim unapologetic and unabashed our hope and faith in the God's Kingdom. In this call, we are mandated to prioritize in our minds, especially in this month as we implore for the repose of souls of our departed brethren, these hope and faith, which are encapsulated into a premise that we are preordained for resurrection. 

At various points in time we have experienced death(s) of someone or persons close to our heart, and as a truism mourning over death of someone comes with deeper thoughts, strong emotions, intense words and actions, but we are reminded today that we should not defocus our minds from the premise that we are preordained for resurrection. This is because as the time runs faster and the year comes to an end, we cannot afford to be out of sight of the rays that shine through the postern of death.

Therefore, the punchline is that as we walk through the experience of the remaining weeks in the silhouette of memorial of All Saints and in earnest expectation of Christ Jesus, we must not be caught up in the illusions that sullenly portray only the darkness of November.