(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Mass-Blog-for-All-Souls-Day-2025-FINAL.mp3)
Nineteenth-Century German Philosopher and atheist Friedrich Nietzsche was most famous for a quote that has been adopted by our pop culture (i.e., Kelly Clarkson):
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Unfortunately, Nietzsche died of a slowly growing madness that plagued him for the last 11 years of his life. If he hadn’t deprived himself of belief in a power greater than himself, he might have added this faith-based rejoinder to his most famous quote:
What kills you doesn’t kill you.
That’s the core of Christian faith: living the life we were called to live. Life is God’s light. It is always on. Sin is the absence of light, and draws us to death’s nothingness. We are called to be something, as powered by God’s mercy. We only need to ask for it so we may draw from its endless energy supply, as the first reading for All Souls Day suggests:
The LORD’s acts of mercy are not exhausted, his compassion is not spent; they are renewed each morning—great is your faithfulness! The LORD is my portion, I tell myself, therefore I will hope in him. The LORD is good to those who trust in him, to the one that seeks him. (Lamentations 3:22-26).
Where atheists lose their way, and therefore, their hope, is believing they belong to themselves. The only sure thing about such belief is the darkness of depression to which it leads. All souls belong to something greater, as Paul tells us in Sunday’s second reading:
None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. (Romans 14:7-9, 10c-12)
That is God’s will: that we follow our eternal destiny. It’s why He came among us, so we may recognize His light of eternal life and guide our temporary lives toward its permanence. The risen Jesus is not someone we recognize with our eyes, as someone without faith would require. He’s easily recognized by the faithful in the gift of self he offers in the Eucharist.
Luke’s gospel this Sunday (Luke 24:13-35) tells us Christ’s own disciples couldn’t bring themselves to believe their crucified Master escaped the grave and walked among them—UNTIL he broke bread with them. This reassured them that the last supper at which they saw him do that would be the first of many leading to an eternal gathering of risen souls.
The core of Nietzsche’s philosophy was the “will to power,” a fundamental drive in all living beings to expand their own influence in the world and overcome its obstacles. He believed Christ’s teachings both suppressed and denied the power of our free will. But ultimately, Nietzsche’s biggest obstacle would be his willful blindness to Christ as the light that sets our souls free from the world. That darkness drove him mad.
The power of all souls is a sense of prayer, and the more we pray for the faithful departed, the more we realize they didn’t go anywhere but into God’s eternal light.
–Tom Andel
This day is always a great reminder of both our past and our future. As we recall our family and loved ones who have gone before us, there is often a yearning to be reunited in the flame of love that brought joy into our lives. These relationships were never perfect, for that can only come from God in the next life that we prepare for now.
Yet the thoughts of reunion bring a warm longing for those we miss and still love with hopeful anticipation. I can’t help but think that will happen if and when we meet Jesus, the Angel’s and saints, along with our departed loved ones.
Thomas, your reflection reminds me of that beautiful hymn paraphrasing chapter 2 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. The hymn “Eye Has Not Seen” actually cites Isaiah’s teaching about how to see God:
Eye has not seen,
ear has not heard
what God has ready
for those who love Him;
Spirit of love, come,
give us the mind of Jesus,
teach us the wisdom of God.
The hymn continues that “Our lives are but a single breath, we flower and we fade, yet all our days are in your hands, so we return in love what love has made.” While on this earth we’re surrounded by worldly things, and we see them with the world’s eyes. But the people God puts into our lives are spiritual beings–as we are. Paul says, “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God.” That’s how all souls survive to see and recognize God’s face–because he revealed it in the lives of all the souls surrounding us in our own life.