St John the Evangelist Parish

November 2, 2025

The Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed

I lost my wallet this year. It was such an annoyance to replace everything in it. A friend, moved by sympathy, gave me a beautiful new one. One month later, I lost that one, too, with all my newly replaced cards. No matter what I did, I couldn’t find what I had lost. I resigned myself to never seeing either of my wallets again.

Fortunately, the Lord Jesus is not like me in this regard. In today’s Gospel (John 6:37–40), he says, “This is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me.” Jesus, unlike me, is ever vigilant with what the Father has given him. He searches for every lost soul — as the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to pursue the one lost sheep, or the woman rejoices upon recovering a lost coin — and even descends to the depths of loss on the cross and into the realm of the dead to recover that which seems forever lost.

On All Souls’ Day, as we remember our faithful departed, these words kindle a hope beyond hope in our hearts. Even the dead are not lost to Jesus, though they may seem so to us. Nothing entrusted to him by the Father is ever truly lost. So, we may hope that every soul, no matter how wandering or forgotten in life, is secure in his loving care and destined to be raised on the last day. Of what the Father gives him, he loses nothing.