Wednesday, 10 December 2025

Sermon Sunday November 2nd 2025 All Souls Day Father Jeff Bergsma

Sermon Sunday November 2nd 2025 All Souls Day 
Father Jeff Bergsma


First Reading: Wisdom 3:1-9.
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 23.
Second Reading:  Romans 5:5-11 or Romans 6:3-9.
Verse Before the Gospel: Matthew 4: 4b.
Gospel: John 6:37-40.

A sculpture of souls in purgatory at the back of the church. 

(Note: This sermon really struck me. It was an excellent sermon. It is posted here with permission.)

Yesterday we celebrated All Saints Day. Those were for the saints that are in heaven. Today we celebrate all souls.

And All Souls Day is for those saints, or those who have died, who are in purgatory, who have not yet made the journey to heaven. And it's a day we come to, yes, as we know, we mourn for the dead. And we also know that when we celebrate funeral masses, it's mourning for the dead as well.

So there is that part of mourning, where we mourn for their loved ones that have gone before us, but there's also something else that we do on All Souls Day and during funerals. It's not just mourning, but rather All Souls Day and funerals are about hope. It's about hope that we have in Jesus Christ.

It is a day, especially today, All Souls Day, where we remember those who we are mourning for. We remember those who had influence in our lives that have gone before us, and we help and support those who mourn for the death of a loved one. That is what we do at funerals.

That is what we do at All Souls Day, is we mourn. We are there for each other and to help each other. But there's more to that, as I said.

Hope. This feast is about hope. It is about the hope we have in the promises of Jesus Christ.

It is about the hope we have in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Paschal Mystery, that our hope is that Jesus died for us so we may be with him in heaven. This is what this day is about. It is about the victory of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

His victory over death. That death is not the last word, that life is. And this is what we celebrate on All Souls Day, and this is what we celebrate at funerals.

Yes, at funerals, yes, we mourn for the dead, there's no doubt about that. But if we ever really noticed what the funeral liturgy is about, it's about hope. It's about the resurrection of the dead.

It's about understanding that life is changed, not ended. That when someone dies, life is changed, not ended. And this is that hope we have in the promises of Jesus Christ.

The hope we have as Christians, as Catholics, is that Jesus' victory over sin and death has given us the gift of heaven. And that is the great hope we have in the gift of heaven. So as I said, we pray today for those souls in purgatory that they may finish their journey to be with God in heaven.

And that would this is what prayer is about. As we talked a little about, the Mass is the greatest prayer we have as Christians, as Catholics. And we pray for the dead, not only in the Eucharistic prayer, but we pray for the dead in the prayers of the faithful.

We pray that those who've gone before us may be ready to see the face of God. Those souls in purgatory who are waiting to be with God in heaven. And purgatory is an interesting thing, right? It's an interesting thing to try and explain.

So what is purgatory? This is how I usually explain purgatory to students and that. Who here knows what summer school is? Why do you go to summer school? You go to summer school either because you failed, or you go to summer school because you've passed, but you need your grades to get up. So you need higher grades.

This is purgatory. You haven't failed. You haven't failed, but you haven't loved.

We haven't loved perfectly. So like summer school to get our grades up, what happens in purgatory, we remove all those things that stop us from loving each other perfectly, from loving God perfectly. All those things are removed so we can be with God in heaven.

And the second way I explain that only as with summer school is, how many here have gone to the doctor's office? What's the first thing you do when you go to the doctor's office? You go to the reception and say, I'm here. And then you go get to sit down. For how long? Who knows? But you will see the doctor that day.

This is purgatory. You have checked in. We'll use St. Peter at the gates.

Why not? And he goes, okay, just hold on a sec. We will be with God in heaven. We just need to wait to be purified.

And this is what purgatory is. Learning to love perfectly, taking away those things that stopped us from loving perfectly. We will be able to see God.

We'll get into heaven. We just need to wait a little bit. And it's through ancient times that's been prayers for the deceased.

Where do we as Christian Catholics, where do we get this notion of purgatory? We get it from the Old Testament, from the second book of Maccabees chapter 12 44 to 46. For if we were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. But if he was looking to the splendid reward that was laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.

Therefore he made atonement for the dead so that they may be delivered from their sin. This is why we pray for the deceased. This is where our hope lies.

In praying for the deceased so they may be with God in heaven. Some of you may have heard of Dante and the Divine Comedy. And the Divine Comedy is the Aferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

What Dante says about Purgatorio, he meets one of his friends or better yet frenemies. They were good at doing that in the Middle Ages. They would put their frenemies or enemies in interesting places.

If you ever go to Sistine Chapel, there's a couple of cardinals that Michelangelo put in hell. But what Dante was saying is he met his frenemy and he was surprised that he was progressing so quickly through purgatory to be with God in heaven. So he asked his friend, how are you progressing so much in this? And he just said, I think it's my wife praying for me to get me to heaven.

Now, the Divine Comedy is not scripture. It is not this is how it happens. But in many ways this is how it happens.

It is through our prayers for the deceased, through our hope in the promise of Jesus Christ that all those who have died may be with God in heaven. That is why we pray. Yes, we mourn.

But we mourn with hope. We mourn with trust. And that what Jesus Christ did in his mission to die for us so we may have life in heaven, that is what we're celebrating today.

We are celebrating that hope, that certainty. But those who have done their best to live in the light of the gospel, live out their faith in life, may be with God in heaven. They may need a little bit of our prayers to get through.

I know I'm going to need a lot of your prayers when I get the purgatory. But as we help each other, that is community. That is the community of saints, if you will.

That is the community of our faith. So we trust that Jesus is the atonement for our sins. And Jesus is.

It is through Jesus' atonement by dying on the cross that we have life with God in heaven. It is through Jesus' life, death, and resurrection through the Paschal mystery that we have the certainty of the promise of heaven. And that, as I said, life is changed not ended.

Our bonds with those who have deceased have changed not ended. They've entered a new version, if you will, a new way. For us, it's praying for them to be with God in heaven.

And God willing, there with God in heaven, they pray for us here on earth to help us to say yes to the hope that we have in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That indeed, death is not the end, but the beginning of new life. That indeed, through Jesus' death on the cross, death has been conquered and life for us with God in heaven has been given to us because of the love of God.

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