Returning from exile

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

There’s something pitiable about the person who lives in exile. To be in a faraway place when your heart is back home can be a severe punishment and a source of discouragement. The closest many of us have been through this experience is when we were sent to our rooms by our parents as punishment or when we were separated from our families and loved ones by thousands of miles due to travel, studies or work. The feeling of homesickness is a clear symptom of someone in exile, but most of us are assured that the feeling will pass because reunion is within reach.

The people of Isaiah’s day, to whom the first reading is addressed, knew that feeling well. Theirs was the plight of the exile. They’re a long way from home, and they have “miles to go before they sleep.” But unlike many of us who are certain of a time when we will be able to return home and reunite with our loved ones, these people who lived in exile were living in the anxiety of an uncertain future. The way home seemed closed and all prospects of reunion appear to have disintegrated. The spectre of living and dying in a foreign land was very real.

For this reason, the prophecy in Isaiah 25 is to them an infinitely consoling song of liberation—an Old Testament Magnificat that anticipates real hope for a bright and glorious future. The hymn breaks into the text unexpectedly, celebrating the end of the humiliation that have befallen the Jews for so long. God is clearly on the move, having subdued the enemies of Israel and having promised to restore them to a place of peace and prominence once again. With God, even the worst exile, which is death, is only temporary. This prophecy celebrates the end of darkness and death for the covenant people.

“On this mountain,
the Lord of hosts will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food.
On this mountain he will remove
the mourning veil covering all peoples,
and the shroud enwrapping all nations,
he will destroy Death for ever.
The Lord will wipe away
the tears from every cheek;
he will take away his people’s shame
everywhere on earth,
for the Lord has said so.”

The marvelous truth is that Israel as a nation will rise again from the dead.

As is often the case with Old Testament prophecies, God, the divine Author of scriptures, could see more than the earthly author. It is not difficult to capture glimpses of a greater event and miracle in this passage—the bodily resurrection that awaits all believers at the end of the age. In fact, when Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:54 that “death is swallowed up in victory,” he’s citing Isaiah 25:8. When John writes in Apocalypse 7:17 that “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes,” and again in 21:4 that God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more,” he’s surely alluding to the same prophecy. Isaiah’s original vision exceeds all expectations.

Whereas, the Jews looked to the fulfilment of this prophecy to take place “on this mountain” and saw Mount Zion, on which Jerusalem is built, as its fulfilment, they failed to recognise that the focus of the prophecy is not the “mountain” but the “Lord of Host” who prepares the banquet, destroys death and restores our communion with God. Christ, Our Lord and Saviour, is the fulfilment of that prophecy, as we see in today’s gospel passage. In the story of the widow of Nain who is grieving over the death of her son, the encounter with the Lord Jesus turns the grieving ceremony into a celebration of life and joy, it is He who removes the mourning veil from her, who wipes away her tears, who destroys death and finally restores her son to her. She did not have to ascend the mountain to experience the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy; the mountain, Jesus, had come to her.

On this day when we commemorate all the faithful departed whom we had lost over the years, we do so not with broken hearts nor in hopeless despair. Just as how our Lord commanded the dead son of the widow to rise up, it is our hope and prayer, that our Lord will command all the faithful departed who have died in His peace, to rise up and have a share in His glory won for us on the mountain where He was crucified.

We live as a people of hope because we believe that humanity’s exile to this sin-scarred planet of crime, cruelty, injustice, and death will one day come to an end. Like Israel of old, we may continue to fail and fall in many ways, we will continue to lose our loved ones to death and one day too, we will have to reckon and accept our own mortality, but God is still God, and we can be certain that He will keep His promises:

• He will prepare a feast for His people.

• He will destroy the corpse’s shroud that enfolds us all.

• He will swallow up death forever.

• He will wipe away the tears from our faces.

• And He will remove His people’s disgrace from all the earth.

In other words, death itself will be exiled forever, and the people of God will finally be home. And the authority for such a great hope is that the Lord Himself “has said so”.

Our duty is to continue to pray for the dead, for the souls in Purgatory, and we do this, not because they need our prayers but because this is what the Holy Spirit has taught us to do. It is a gift of God, to allow us to share in His work in bringing His people to perfection. Purgatory is where souls are prepared for heaven, it is where the work of God which begun in their lives would be completed. It is the “processing centre” where exiles are prepared for their final homecoming to heaven. God wills that we should share in this work through our prayers. And by praying for them, we are attesting to the truth, “life is changed, not ended” at death.