Hurricane Sandy--All Souls Day Homily

We have all witnessed the destruction and sadness that Sandy brought to our land. 

 

Sand strewn over the streets, settling to the ground as the salt water recedes. 

Seemingly impregnable levees bypassed by the sea

Towering skyscrapers rocked in the wind.

Flames of fire engulfing the homes and havens of the innocent.

The eyes of those who have lost so much and even lost it all filled with watery tears of sadness as the levee of their heart gives way.

The sadness and turmoil, the transience and passing nature of life flashes before us as we see pictures on the internet, watch videos on YouTube and sit transfixed in front of the local news. 

 

In the midst of it all we wonder how a God of love, a God of compassion, forgiveness and order could allow such sadness and loss to exist.  Maybe our own faith is rocked to witness such things or maybe we feel it means we need to rely more on our own strength or maybe we find ourselves feeling too scared to face a world with such uncertainty. 

 

And yet the scriptures today promise us:  the souls of the just are in the hands of

God and no torment should touch them.

 

Yet this is hardly a consolation given the destruction we see on the television.

 

But the destruction is not all we see.  We see hope.  A hope that cannot simply have a human origin, but must be founded in God.  A hope of resilience.  A hope of persistence. A guiding hope of knowing that death and destruction and difficulties and sadness are not the end.  When we witness people joining together to lend a helping hand, when we witness those who were spared helping those who lost it all, when we witness efforts to regain what was lost we see the hope that can only come from one place—our ultimate hope, the hope of all of our days.  It is a hope that promises us, even though destruction and death are all around, the souls of the just are in the hands of God and no torment should touch them.

 

As we gather this evening for All Souls Day it is this hope that we should keep close to our hearts.  For death is not a reality that any of us have escaped or will escape.  We have lost loved ones in which a day never passes where we do not think of them.  We have lost friends who can never be replaced. We have lost spouses who are the only ones who could seemingly complete us. And we have lost children that never should have gone so soon.  And we, too, will one day experience the sting of death.

 

Yet our faith tells us that there is always room for hope.  For our hope is placed in no single human being, our hope is not something that comes from us, our hope is not something of this passing world.  But our hope is in God. 

 

The God who holds our soul in his hands,

the God who destroyed the sting of death,

the God who cares for us and for those who have gone before us. 

The God who proved his love to us by offering up Hope on the cross.

 

Even though death and destruction sometimes seem to be all around us, no torment shall ever touch us, because God holds us, and our loved ones, in his loving hands.