Divine Gift Exchange

In the gospel for All Souls Day, Christ highlights, a mysterious truth at the heart of every Christian vocation: we are the Father’s gift to the Son. Our Christian vocation amounts to us being gifts in a divine gift exchange. God the Father makes us freely and gives us freely to Christ, the Son, who freely embraces us as the Father’s gift. Indeed, Christ embraces us so completely that he suffers, dies, and rises for us. He annihilates death for us, that we, as the Father’s gift, might live for all eternity. In Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection we become one with God. Only in this great exchange of love between the Father and the Son does our response to a vocation make sense. We give ourselves over generously to the particulars that God places in our lives because we know ourselves as gifts exchanged in the love that is God. Whatever we do in response to God’s call, we do in God’s love, with God’s help.

It is in this wonderous, love-laden, divine gift-exchange that the Church celebrates All Souls Day. On this occasion we recognize, with confident hope, the love God has shared with us in the people God placed in our lives. And we pray for them, our faithful departed, that they might know the fullness of God’s loving embrace – the fullness of resurrection – for all eternity.