By Anthony Selvanathan
Special to the Herald
Sometimes the people we miss most return to us in the simplest ways.
A familiar song. A favorite meal. An old photograph. A story told around the dinner table that everyone has heard a hundred times, but somehow still makes us laugh.
No matter our age, death eventually touches our lives. We experience loss differently, but we share the longing to remember those who have been part of our lives.
As we approach All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2, I’ve been thinking about a familiar refrain from liturgical composer Marty Haugen: “We remember, we celebrate, we believe.”
We remember
Each November, many parishes invite us to write the names of departed loved ones in a book of remembrance, often placed beside the paschal candle, whose light reminds us of Christ’s victory over death and the promise of our own resurrection.
We remember those who laughed with us, loved us, challenged us and helped shape who we are. Some memories bring tears. Others bring smiles. Sometimes, the very same memory brings both.
But our prayers don’t have to stop with the names written on those pages.
We also remember the unborn whose lives ended before birth, those who lived on the margins of society and those who died alone, with no one to mourn them. Their lives mattered, too. In God’s eyes, no one is forgotten.
As Catholics, we pray for those who have died, entrusting them to God’s mercy and asking that they may share in the fullness of eternal life.
We celebrate
All Souls’ Day is solemn, but there’s also room for gratitude and joy. Sometimes the greatest way to honor someone is simply to remember the happiness they brought into our lives.
A funeral can bring together relatives who haven’t gathered in years. Stories are shared, old photographs come out and perhaps conversations begin that once seemed impossible.
But not every loss brings reconciliation, and not every memory is happy.
I’ve experienced loss myself this year, and I know grief can be fresh, complicated and difficult to put into words.
Some relationships leave us with unanswered questions or things we wish had been different.
That’s part of being human. We can carry gratitude and regret at the same time, trusting that God’s mercy is greater than anything we leave unresolved.
Perhaps remembering those who have died also reminds us not to wait until a funeral to tell the living how much they mean to us.
We believe
My dear friend, Father Marvin Samiano, once shared an analogy about death and the Resurrection that has stayed with me: the childhood game of peekaboo.
When someone hides their face, a baby can no longer see them. But when that familiar face reappears, the baby lights up with joy.
When someone we love dies, we can no longer see their face, hear their voice or embrace them. That absence hurts. Even Jesus wept at the death of his friend Lazarus. Our faith doesn’t ask us to pretend that loss is painless.
But through Christ’s death and resurrection, we have been given the promise of eternal life.
At my family’s funerals, we have often chosen Jeremy Young’s “We Shall Rise Again” as the Communion hymn. Its fifth verse imagines being welcomed into God’s presence by angels and saints, reunited with family and loved ones, where the burdens of earthly life have fallen away.
Singing this hymn during Communion reminds me that, as members of the body of Christ, we remain united in him, even beyond death.
In the communion of saints, we pray for the faithful departed and entrust them to God’s mercy, hoping that, by his grace, we will one day see them again.
This November, when you see the book of remembrance beside the paschal candle, pause for a moment.
Remember the names written there, and those known only to God. Give thanks for the lives that have touched yours. Offer a prayer for those you miss and for all the faithful departed.
And let’s carry that practice beyond November. A prayer on someone’s birthday, the anniversary of their passing or an ordinary day when a memory comes to mind can be a beautiful way of remembering them.
As the candle burns, remember what its light proclaims: Death does not have the final word.
We remember with love. We celebrate with gratitude. And we believe with hope.