Our Sacred Journey Continues: An All Saints & Souls Day Reflection

At this morning's All Saints and Souls Day liturgy at the Spirit of St. Stephen's Catholic Community the following was shared as the second reading. I share it now at The Wild Reed in memory of my friend Tess.

How they do live on . . . because death can never put an end to our relationship with [those we love].

Wherever or however else they may have come to life since, it is beyond doubt that they live still in us. Memory is more than a looking back to a time that is no longer; it is a looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still. The people we loved. The people who loved us. The people who for good or ill taught us things.

. . . Who knows what the "communion of saints" means, but surely it means more than just that we are haunted by ghosts. Because they are not ghosts, these people we once knew; not just echoes of voices that have years since ceased to speak, but saints in the sense that through them something of the power and richness of life itself not only touched us once long ago, but continues to touch us. It is as if they carry something of us on their way as we assuredly carry something of them on ours.

– Frederich Buechner
Excerpted from The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days
1991

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
"We Are Sojourners on This Earth"
A Hallowtide Reflection
Remnants of a Past Life
All You Holy Men and Women
"Call Upon Those You Love"
Remembering Nanna Smith (1919-2005)
Commemorating My Grandfather, Aub Bayly, and the Loss of AHS Centaur
Honoring Kathleen Judge, CSJ (1935-2013)
Marv Davidov, 1931-2012
God is in the Roses . . . and the Thorns
David McCaffrey, 1947-2011
Remembering Sister Rita
Remembering Dusty

Related Off-site Link:
Cycling to March.

Image 1: January, 2011.
Image 2: With Tess in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia, 2003.