All Souls’ Day  2025 – St Mary’s Cathedral, Hobart

Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral for this evening’s Mass. Welcome especially to the young pilgrims who will be travelling to Melbourne for the Australian Catholic Youth Festival.

This weekend our Masses step out of the green of Ordinary time and the Mass of All Souls’ takes precedence.

All Souls’ Day has a particular poignancy for Catholic people. People visit the graves of their loved ones on this day. They go to spend a little time in prayer, to reminisce and I know some Irish people who might spend time having afternoon tea with their family member.

Our Cathedral priests will be at the cemetery tomorrow afternoon. All Souls’ Day is a day to remember, to give thanks and to pray that our dear loved ones are ushered home to paradise.

The prophet Isaiah gives us an image of what paradise might look like with a vision so radiant that it almost takes our breath away:

“On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food… He will destroy death forever. The Lord will wipe away the tears from every cheek.”

On God’s holy mountain, every hunger is satisfied, every wound is healed, every tear is dried. Isaiah did not paint fantasy – he is revealed destiny. This is what awaits those whom we remember today — our beloved dead — and, in own turn, all who live and die in God’s friendship.

The veil of grief and mortality that covers us will one day be lifted. The funeral becomes a feast. Mourning gives way to rejoicing. Death opens the way to the fullness of life.

All Souls’ Day is not a day of despair but of deep hope. We stand not before a wall of darkness. We stand before the doorway that opens into the banquet of God.

Luke’s Gospel places us on another road — outside the little town of Nain. Two processions are moving toward each other: one of life, one of death. Jesus, surrounded by his disciples and the crowd, meets a widow who has lost her only son. Her heart is broken. Her future is extinguished because he would have been the source of her economic survival. He was all she had. It was tragic.

And then came the most beautiful line:

“When the Lord saw her, he felt sorry for her.”

Here the heart of God is revealed: not distant, not abstract, but moved with compassion.
Jesus steps forward, touches the tray on which the body is being carried, and speaks:

“Young man, I tell you, arise.”

At Jesus’ command, death surrenders what it had taken. Life breaks through like sunlight after a storm.

Every time we pray for the dead, every time we commend a soul to God’s mercy, we trust that the same compassionate Christ meets them — and us — on the road.
Why? Because He is the Lord of life who turns every funeral procession toward resurrection.

We are in this Jubilee year of Hope called by Pope Francis and continued by Pope Leo. Calling the Jubilee, Pope Francis rendered the first words of tonight’s second reading as “Hope does not disappoint”. The full version that we just heard is also beautiful:

“Hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”

Even in the shadow of death, Christian hope endures because it rests not on our goodness but on God’s mercy.
Paul reminds his original readers  and us today: “Christ died for us while were still sinners.”
The Cross is God’s great interruption where love breaks into loss, grace overcomes guilt, and life defeats death.
So we do not remember our dead as lost, but as found in Jesus Christ.

As I said many people will visit graves today. But with the eyes of faith, we do not see graves as endings, but as seeds — planted in the earth, awaiting the springtime of resurrection.

At the close of this All Souls’ Mass, we will commission the young pilgrims who will travel to Melbourne for the Australian Catholic Youth Festival.
How fitting that this happens on a day when we pray for all who have gone before us.

You see, our faith is a living tradition, handed from generation to generation — from the saints who have gone before us to the witnesses who rise up now.

Pilgrims, as you go forth, you carry with you the prayers of those we remember today. The Communion of Saints is not a poetic idea — it is a living network of grace. The holy dead walk with you. The faith that sustained them will sustain you.

You go to Melbourne as pilgrims of hope, to proclaim that life conquers death, that mercy is stronger than sin, and that Christ is alive in his Church.

May the same Lord, who stopped the procession at Nain, walk beside you, speak life to your hearts, and send you to be witnesses of compassion and joy.

And may those we remember this All Soul’s Day rest in peace — and rise in glory.