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The 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Fr. Tom Wilson, Pastor November 5, 2017

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a couple of years ago some very good friends of mine whose wedding I did just shortly after I was ordained a priest had that The Human Experience that in 20 plus years of service as a zapper I've discovered to be probably the most difficult thing any human being can face any they they lost their son their teenage son in a in an act of violence and the it was it was absolute it was a very very difficult experience for their for their family and and a very very painful but even in the midst of the pain and the grief that they experienced in that in that horrific loss in in their life they were also able to see the movements in the workings of of God in at all they were surrounded by by people in their in their own Parish over there to to care for them and their grief they were surrounded by by their friend's pass and present they were surrounded by the school community that there that their son was in they were they were surrounded by people that they didn't even know who experienced similar things and their own families it's simply showed up to offer them their prayers and they're in their support physically and spiritually and emotionally they were very very grateful for that in the in the midst of of their Grace a couple of months after that that happened really a lot of the same subset of a people gather together for another funeral funeral for one of our friends mothers and as high as the mother of the of the Teen who had died just a couple of months ago came and enter to pay her respects to to the family she she got kind of crowded around by a lot of us who knew her and people were understandably asking her a lot of questions about how she was doing how she was feeling all those sorts of things and she's a very polite and and faithful woman and did her best to answer the questions but finally just said you know what I don't want to talk about myself and what I'm going through right now I'm here to to offer condolences the family that that the our friend who had lost who would lost his mother and I really don't want to talk about what we're going through as a family right now she was doing it obviously she didn't want to disrupt that frankly the funeral in the Wake for for our friends for another family was also a sense of the other reality of how different people respond and react to grief some people some people really do want to do in a more private way she obviously at that point needed to needed to be private wanted to have some semblance of normalcy in her life by attending the wake of another family and and and all of that and then are the things that that that led them to to really trust and believe in the in the goodness of God was the people that were surrounding them but they also had their own journey to to watch as a family in the in the Greek Fenton and pay that they were experiencing and the truth is that they were released they were surrounded by a lot of people a lot of us who wanted to do one thing that we simply were not going to be able to do and that was to take the pain in the state away from what they had experienced everybody wanted to do that and it wasn't going to happen it wasn't going to happen they had to walk that that Journey themselves I had to open themselves to the to the grace of God working in in in their lives and they still continue to do that to this day the truth is that as we as we Face the reality of of death in that in the more that our culture drifts further and further away from God and the promises God has made to each and everyone of us created in His image and likeness the more difficult it becomes the more difficult it becomes for us to face the reality of our own human Earthly immortality the truth is we have faith that the gifts that God has given to us in the life of the body is a gift but we also know that it is a temporary gift it begins and it will end in the body we know and yet the more we pursue the more we pursue the aggressive Pursuits of of staying young and and all of that the more we talk the more we push aside the reality of our own human mortality and when we do that we also push try the truth that Jesus Christ in his own rising from the dead is also made a promise I promise of eternal life to all of us who say yes all of us to walk in that path all of us who choose to receive to receive that the grades and we and we live in that reality but we also live in the beauty of the body of Christ the beauty of the body of Christ in which we do experience the truth and in the difficulty and the pain of the end of Earthly life that temporary separation that it experiences but we also in in the life of the church never do it alone we never do it alone I can imagine very very few things more painful than enduring death of a loved one by ourselves with nobody around to support that's what we have the body of Christ for that's why we have to we have the family of God the family the church to to surround us with prayer and November is the month that we do that month is the month that we do it liturgically and spiritually as we confront the reality of our own mortality and sometimes confronting the reality of our own mortality is much much easier what is confronting the reality of mortality of the people in our lives that we love sometimes a lot easier to do it on our own that it is that it is walking along with other people but in this month in this month we remember those who have gone before us we pray for those who have gone before us but we also walk along with people who have experienced it's in their own lives and continue to pray and we also look towards the future we also looked the future of the promise that Jesus has made and recognized that in the in the gift of this life which we should grab with abundance and live with gratitude every single day also has a fixed and it died but that fixed and leads to something that is Perpetual that is eternal in the life in the life of God in the communion of saints and that's what we look forward to even in the midst of sadness even in the midst of the sorrow grief we recognize we recognize the gift of life to come and just a in just a minute or so I will read I'll read all the names of people who have been buried from from All Saints in the last year and every single one of them has a particular story every single family has a particular route and an empath of of grief that they walk on every single one of them has a particular history in their own line but the one thing the one thing and whether we know them or not where the wave ever heard their names or not is the fact that we as a church and as a parish family walk along we pray for those who have gone before us we pray for families left behind and we live every single one of us in the trust and the promise of Jesus resurrected from the dead those who have been buried from All Saints in the law last year Peter Sheen Jodi Grover Andrew Christensen David Von Essen Jacqueline wisnosky Don Szymanski laddie Klein Michelle parks Lawrence Junior man Jim Rider Isaiah McKay Juliana San Martin Gerald schlicht Virginia emond Dolores Burdick Alice Spivak George Merrick Rose highlights mark and rail Julius DeVos Vivian stoppie Karen Decker William Donaldson Lucille shuffler Beverly rudiger Alice Mitchell Patrick bresnahan Zoe Lamar David Jensen Jeremy Burcham Merwin MC Hardy William Bill vidmar Thomas Tommy puglisi jr. Therese test Risinger Lydia Quinn Schaefer Geraldine Tyson Gabriel Smith Grace Candler and Marcella Jackson

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The 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

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