By this time of the year the world of nature is almost
in total hibernation. Growth has come to a stop for a while & the
place is full of leaves that have fallen
from trees. In the springtime we talk of new life, at this time of the year the
opposite is the case. November is the month of the Holy Souls, the month when
we remember our dead. We do that all through the year, we remember in a special
way our loved ones at times of birthdays & anniversaries. November is the month when we remember all
our dead, not just the members of our families, or our friends & all the
people we have known, but all the dead. Recently a sign has been put inside the
gate of the Abbey telling us that we should respect our dead & take our
rubbish home. As we all know the Abbey in Bantry has a beautiful view across
the bay. It is a cemetery, a sacred place, a place where the mortal remains of
many people we have loved & known are laid to rest. They are not dumped
there & neither should our rubbish. Sometimes we like to get rid of our
problems, it’s a bit like out of sight & out of mind. Just because we can’t
see something doesn’t mean that it has stopped existing. We cannot see our
loved ones who have died. However we do believe that they are now in a new
& different existence with God in eternal life. Because of that we know
that while the bodies of our loved ones are in the cemeteries they were buried
in, in reality they are not there. We should not use that as an excuse to see a
cemetery as a public place, that if we leave our rubbish there somebody else
will look after it and it won’t be our problem anymore. Just because we can’t
see our problems or the problems we cause doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. Fr. Anthony
No comments:
Post a Comment