November 3, 2025 – The Feast of All Souls

On this Feast of All Souls, we gather in a spirit both tender and brave. Tender, because we dare to remember those whom we love but see no longer—parents and partners, children and friends, mentors and companions, those who shaped us with their presence and leave us changed in their absence. Brave, because in remembering them, we also face our own grief, our longing, our questions, and our hope.

All Souls Day is one of the most honest observances of the Christian year. Unlike the triumphant visions of All Saints yesterday, today’s feast meets us in the quiet places—where the ache of loss lives, where names still catch in our throats, where an empty chair at the table still speaks. And yet, the honesty of this day is shot through with hope. For Christians do not remember the dead as lost. We remember them as beloved—beloved by us, and even more profoundly, beloved by God.

Wisdom of Solomon gives us the language the heart longs for: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.” These words are not sentiment or wishful thinking. They come from a tradition that wrestled with suffering, persecution, exile, and grief—and still dared to proclaim a God whose love is stronger than death. The writer looks at a world that often seems unfair and asserts, quietly but firmly, that God’s faithfulness does not end at the grave.

To say that the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God is to declare that our loved ones rest in a place of utter safety—a place beyond pain, beyond fear, beyond the limits of our sight but not beyond the reach of divine love. When we can no longer hold them, God holds them still.

But perhaps the most pastoral and tender promise in that passage is this: “In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died… but they are at peace.” Loss confuses us. Death disrupts us. When someone we love dies, it does not feel peaceful. It feels like fracture. It feels like the world comes apart. And yet Scripture tells us that while death remains for us an experience of sorrow, for them it is peace. Peace that surpasses understanding. Peace that reflects God’s mercy and joy.

This is not to diminish our grief, but to give it a horizon. Grief is the price of love, and we honour our dead by allowing ourselves to feel its weight. What All Souls proclaims is that this grief is held—held by the One who binds up the brokenhearted, the One who gathers our tears, the One who knows our beloved even more deeply than we do.

In our Gospel today, Martha stands in this very tension—between grief and hope, between what is and what she longs for. Her brother Lazarus has died, and she meets Jesus with a mixture of faith and pain: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is one of the most honest prayers ever spoken. Not a neat theological statement, but a heartbroken cry.

And Jesus receives her honesty. He does not correct her. He does not rebuke her. He meets her in her sorrow and shifts her gaze toward the promise at the centre of our faith: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Notice that Jesus does not say, “I will be.” He says, “I am.” Resurrection is not just a distant future event. It is a present reality grounded in who Jesus is. In him, life and love are already stronger than death. In him, the future promise reaches into the present and steadies us. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live. These are not words meant to end the conversation but to anchor it. Jesus meets Martha’s grief with the assurance that death does not have the final word—not for Lazarus, not for her, not for us.

All Souls invites us to stand with Martha—to bring our grief, our confusion, our unfinished goodbyes, and to hear Christ speak resurrection into them. Not to erase our sorrow, but to companion us within it. The hope of All Souls is not a denial of death’s pain; it is the conviction that death’s power is limited, bounded by the endless love of God.

Today, as we remember our own departed loved ones, each name holds a story. Some of those stories are long and full; others are heartbreakingly short. Some leave us grateful; others leave us with questions or regrets. And yet, each of these beloved ones is held in the same promise: they are in the hand of God.

The communion we share with them is real, rooted in the life of Christ who binds earth and heaven together. We cannot see them, but in the mystery of God’s eternal kingdom, they are not far. They are gathered into the great company of all the faithful departed, living in God’s light, transformed by God’s mercy, embraced by God’s peace.

And so, on this day of remembrance, we hold two truths together: we miss them deeply, and they are held securely. We grieve honestly, and we hope fiercely. We remember with tears, and we entrust with faith.

May the God who raised Jesus from the dead, who promises life beyond death and peace beyond understanding, sustain us as we remember. May the light of Christ shine upon all whom we love but see no longer. And may we trust, with Wisdom and with Martha, that the souls of the righteous are indeed in the hand of God—and that nothing, not even death, can separate them or us from the love of Christ. Amen.