Today is the third day of a popular triduum. Beginning with Halloween (actually, the vigil of the feast of All Saints), we celebrate those who have been formally canonized by the church and today we remember "the faithful departed," all who have gone before us.  

For Catholics in many parts of the world, this feast outshines the other two. Today, people remember their ancestors and others who left this world before them. Many attend the Eucharist and visit family graves, others celebrate with special meals at home or at the cemetery. In the Peruvian mountains, people gather at loved ones' graves, sharing the deceased's favorite foods and drinks while inviting others to visit and pray with them. However we celebrate, this triduum recognizes our living connections with people longer present in this world.  

Today we think about the hereafter. "Here" plus "after," isn't that a funny combination?  Obviously it refers to the time beyond death, but it connects our moment to what's to come. It links the now and the future, just as the feast links us across the ages.

Our reading from the Book of Wisdom, popular for funerals, reassures us that God's love will be our primary experience after bodily death. This counteracts grim visions of purgatory as something like a painful jail term designed to purify one from sin (and for which others can pay the bail). While the reading addresses the perennial question of reward and punishment, it emphasizes a glorious future for everyone.  

In his book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis created a dream vision of the processes of the afterlife. Lewis describes all kinds of people who resist God's invitation to enter the realm of love by clinging to something that doesn't belong there. The book can be embarrassing to read because we too easily recognize ourselves among those who refuse to let go of whatever prevents them from accepting the vulnerability of being loved without limit and without merit. There seems to be something in us, perhaps especially in our competitive culture, that thinks we can and should earn God's love. Doesn't that come from misguided pride and wild egocentrism, even if we try to disguise it as humble striving to be good?

Today's liturgy offers us two options for a second reading, both from Paul's Letter to the Romans. The first (Romans 5:5-11) proclaims, "Hope does not disappoint." Paul invites us to recall and revivify our experience of God's love poured into (and out of) our hearts. He reminds us that Christ took on the mission of embodying divine love for us, whether or not we accept or even want it. Paul teaches that God's love always remains available because Christ continues reconciling.

(Note: careful reading of the Gospels demonstrates that Christ's reconciliation is not a process of getting God to accept us but rather of urging us to know and rejoice in God's limitless love for each and everyone.)

In our second option (Romans 6:3-9), Paul exhorts us to open our hearts and souls to the mystical experience of union with Christ. He reminds us that from the moment of baptism into communion in the body of Christ, we are and will remain one in Christ.

In John's Gospel, Jesus restates this idea saying that he will never reject anyone who comes to him because the Father desires that all should be one in Christ. This union describes eternal life: all of creation sharing divine life in the new fullness of Christ's resurrection.

Each of our readings invites us into ordinary mystical experiences. They tell us we are capable of realizing how deeply united we are as God's creatures. We are created to live in full union with God and one another: here and hereafter, altogether, all at once.

This may not sound much like a traditional approach to All Souls' Day. Some spend this day praying on behalf of those suffering the punishment involved in post-death purification. Think about it. Doesn't that approach overshadow the image of the loving God Jesus described as a Prodigal Father, replacing it with an image of God as a bookkeeper who calculates how much each must pay to gain admittance to heaven? Isn't that a variation of the idea that we can and need to earn the free gift of salvation? 

How might we celebrate this day or triduum? Begin by rejoicing in the promises of our baptism: God's unmerited love binds us together across the ages as the body of Christ in union with the Father. Let us take as the theme of this day, "Hope does not disappoint."

Then, together with all the faithful departed, let us sing, "O death, where is your sting?"

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." How often do you blithely say that? Have you ever considered how audacious that is? In the Eucharistic liturgy we say, "We dare to say, Our Father …" But outside of the Mass we begin prayer by claiming to speak in the name of the Trinity, and we rarely think twice about it.

In what ways might we be like the Pharisee of the story Jesus tells us today? Was that fellow reflecting on what he was saying or was he just reciting a litany that he considered a prayer of thanksgiving? How often do prayers roll off our tongue while we're thinking of something else entirely?  

When we listen to a cranky child, a dissatisfied student, an upset client or even someone who is telling us the same story for the umpteenth time, we might wish they were filling a hot air balloon instead of delivering their suffocating monologue to us. Could that be how God feels when we pray, not without ceasing, but without thinking or feeling?

Jesus designed the story of the Pharisee and tax collector to catch us short, to make us reconsider our practice and theology of prayer, but we may have heard it too often to give it the attention it deserves. 

When I think of that tax collector, I think of an experience at a parish where I recently made a mission appeal. I can't count how many young people I saw with tattoos, baseball caps, leather jackets and mildly intimidating appearances go into church with reverence. Guys were accompanied by girls in tight jeans and long black mantillas. There they knelt with heads bowed, praying for all they were worth. They did not look like the people I expected to find outdoing the Legion of Mary!

Some of these young people attend very "conservative" parishes. There, they and many others seem to experience a depth that they don't find in much of our culture. Incense takes them away from the world of street and screen. Kneeling and singing in Latin helps them reach out to something older, greater and more mysterious than what they find in their everyday surroundings. They're not tax collectors, but many people on the subway or walking down a poorly lit street might be nervous at seeing them approach. These young people are incognito God-seekers whose reverence and piety offer a witness to any who are willing to see.  

There's a scene in Luke 11 in which the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. That's the most teaching about prayer in the Gospel of Luke. Today's story draws us beyond the prayers we've learned and even our own styles of prayer. The last thing the Pharisees and Jesus' disciples wanted to hear was about the holiness of a tax collector — and that's precisely why Jesus told his story.

The Preface to Eucharistic Prayer IV says, "You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift." That implies that the urge to pray, the desire to be intimate with God, is itself God-given. We were created with this desire, and God urges us to engage in relationship. 

Neither the tax collector nor the Pharisee made the sign of the cross; that wouldn't come in for another 200 years or so. But one of them prayed with all the humility of someone who feels invited into the presence of a loving God while the other offered his résumé and a vague thanks for being better than most.  

What do we mean when we start to pray with the Sign of the Cross? If we believe that the desire to pray is God-given, then beginning our prayer with this gesture declares that we are accepting the divine invitation to express and deepen our relationship. When we do it together, we proclaim that this community has been called together by God and relates to God together. That's quite an act of faith in God and in our companions!  

Today's Gospel story reminds us that prayer calls forth genuine encounter; or, we might say, "real presence." To pray at the invitation of the Trinity requires us to strive to be as fully and genuinely present as we can be, to God and to those with whom we pray. Whether we bow or cover our heads, whether incense and bells or guitars and chimes help us enter more consciously into God's presence, we remember that we pray at God's unceasing invitation.

We can pray in petition, praise, thanksgiving or repentance, but underneath every kind or style of prayer, the purpose is simply to grow in relationship with God and the people of God — which means everyone.