HOMILY FOR MASS FOR THE COMMEMORATION OF ALL THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED – All Souls’ Day
St Mary’s Cathedral, 2 November 2025
It’s been voted the greatest of all movie songs. Yet Judy Garland’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” nearly didn’t make it into the Final Cut of the Wizard of Oz. After filming in 1939, MGM executives thought the song slowed the picture down and made Dorothy seem too sad! But producer Arthur Freed fought to keep it in, and it went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song and was later voted by the American Film Institute as the top movie track of the twentieth century.[1]
Judy Garland sang it to American soldiers during World War Two, many artists recorded it, and it was to feature in subsequent movies like Meet Joe Black and Sleepless in Seattle and in TV shows such as ER and Glee. It’s been used for wake-up calls on space missions and as a ‘hymn’ for secular memorials. In 2010 a humanoid Partner Robot played it on a trumpet, when the Toyota corporation’s staff were in crisis after having had to recall millions of vehicles.[2]
Describing a place where skies are blue and dreams come true and all troubles melt away, Over the Rainbow evoked the dream of a better life or at least afterlife. It spoke to the conviction that we are made for more than this, the longing deep in the human heart for something beyond present woes. As mortal beings we naturally recoil from death, but as immortal ones we dare hope for more after death. The inevitability of death forces us to face up to how we’ve lived, what we’ve prioritised, and who we’ve become in the process.
For Christians, this takes on an added dimension. Christ’s victory over the tomb made death a door to our transformation (1Cor ch. 15). With the Holy Apostle Paul we tease: “Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, your sting?” (1Cor 15:54-55). For Christ declares: “I am the Resurrection and the Life; he who believes in me, even if he die, yet shall live” (Jn 11:25). So fear not Lazarus, Martha and Mary, despair not parent of the lost child, hope for paradise my companion on the cross (Mt 9:18-26; Lk 7:11-17; 23:43; Jn ch. 11).
Yet death still provokes anxiety. We miss those who have entered that unknown territory and must rely on the promise of that we cannot see. Thomas spoke for us all when he said: Lord, you tell us our hearts should not be troubled and that you are preparing a place for us with your Father. But we don’t know where that is or how to get there. Please don’t sing that it’s somewhere over the rainbow! (cf. Jn 14:1-6)
Our Old Testament Wisdom book confronts this mystery head on. Solomon, the wisest sage of the ancient world, assures us that “Death is not of God’s making. He delights not in the death of the living but created [us] to exist.” (Wis 1:12-14) In today’s text (Wis 4:7-15) Solomon grieves someone good who died before their time. Perhaps it was one of his own children, or a friend or colleague. What matters, he says, is that our life be a good one more than a long one. Indeed, an honourable life is itself ‘ripe old age’. If God takes His favourites to Himself early, it’s to save them from worldly troubles and corruption and put them by His side in perpetual light, rest or peace, he says. “Yet people look on uncomprehending. They do not take to heart that God’s grace and mercy await his elect and he watches over his saints.” We should live for today but with the horizon of a better tomorrow before us (cf. Eccles 9:1-12).
Paul, a Jew of the Graeco-Roman world, was heir to that wisdom. But in his epistle today he focuses on the difference Christian faith makes (Rom 5:17-21). We believe that as the Fall of one man—Adam—brought sin and death to all humanity, so the Sacrifice of one Man—the new Adam, Christ—has brought grace and life to all. Where there was damnation, now there is salvation; “where sin abounds, grace abounds the more”; where death was king, eternal life is now. It’s the greatest asymmetry in the cosmos!
This is what sustains us: that no matter how far we have fallen, grace reaches further; that no matter our darkness, there’s a brighter Light and Love for us; that no matter how opaque life-after-death is to us, we know in Whose safe hands we will be. As final as Death might seem, Resurrection is more final still.
But if Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us as He promised (Jn 14:1-3), a place beyond our imagining for those who love God (1Cor 2:9), why prayers for the departed, why Mass offerings for ancestors, why the Catholic talk of Purgatory? (2Macc 12:39-46; Mt 5:26; 2Tim 1:18)
Well, purgatory, we should be clear, is not punishment so much as purification. Visions of fire incline us to think of it as a temporary hell. But it is in fact more heaven than hell, indeed it is the antechamber to heaven. Purgatory is the mercy of God, recognising our friendship with Him unto death, yet also that our need for some finishing touches before we see Him face-to-face. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Purgatory is envisioned as a large mountain rising from the sea, bathed in dawn light.[3] Unlike Hell’s eternal darkness and isolation, souls dwell on Mount Purgatorio there in communion, already singing psalms together and encouraging one another, helping each other climb in the joyful knowledge that soon they will all reach the summit.
What’s more wonderful is that the journey of the departed to God also involves us—the Church on earth. For, from the earliest days, Christians have prayed for and with those who have gone before them. The Communion of Saints is not just a club for those who have made it, nor even for those plus some would-be saints on earth. It is the living reality of Christ’s Mystical Body the Church, stretching across time and space, even across the boundary of life and death. Writing in the fourth century, St Cyril of Jerusalem explained to catechumens that in the Liturgy “we make mention also of those who have already fallen asleep” in death, “believing that our supplications will be of very great benefit to those souls.”[4] Every Mass offered, every Rosary prayed, every charitable deed in their memory helps the dead on their journey. For the living and the dead are one body, family, communion moving together toward God.
Which makes death more a gateway than an endpoint. We can’t visit the departed like Orpheus of Greek myth. But we can still care for those we’ve loved and lost through prayers, penances, indulgences. Our faith, hope and love are not just for the living but also for the dead, not just as a sentimental memory but as a living relationship. So, when Christ says to have our lamps lit, like servants alert for their Master’s return (Lk 12:35-40), He’s readying us for our own deaths but also giving us confidence about those who’ve gone before us. As we commemorate All Souls today and throughout this month of November let us be consoled in faith, steadfast in hope and active in our love, so that with our aid but above all the divine assistance, the faithful departed might enjoy a place far greater than any “Over the Rainbow”.
Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.
[1] Gary Shapiro, “‘Over the Rainbow’: The story behind the song,” Columbia News 15 November 2017 https://news.columbia.edu/news/over-rainbow-story-behind-song-century
[2] David McNeill ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Toyota and the Consequences of the Drive to be the World’s No.1’ in Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 8, Issue 9. No. 2. (March: 2010) https://apjjf.org/david-mcneill/3311/article
[3] Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio, Canto I.
[4] Cyril of Jerusalem, ‘Catechetical Lecture 23.9’, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 7, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1894), 154.
INTRODUCTION TO MASS FOR THE COMMEMORATION OF ALL THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED
ALL SOULS’ DAY
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, NOVEMBER 2 2025
Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney for today’s Mass commemorating the Souls of All the Faithful Departed. Today we remember our loved ones and our ancestors in the faith who died in God’s friendship and pray that, assisted by our prayers and purified from the effects of sin, they may soon enter into the fullness of eternal life with Him.
I greet Archimandrite Clemente Bobchev, a Vatican advisor who is visiting Australia as part of his work in technology and Catholic healthcare.
To everyone here today, both visitors and regulars, a very warm welcome to you all.