One of the goals of the Bible, especially the Gospels, is to move the human heart from fear to peace, a leap that can be very difficult for us to make. No wonder Jesus repeats over and over to the disciples, “Do not be afraid.”

I think one of the major sources of fear is that of rejection. It goes beyond feeling unappreciated or not needed. At its core, rejection feels like death, a disapproval of our entire being.

This is portrayed in Genesis. Adam and Eve fear they are not good enough because of their limitations, so they try to be like God, and in doing so, they disobey. That disobedience leads them to fear that God will no longer accept them. When confronted, they start blaming each other, and then blaming God himself. The very fear of rejection caused them to reject each other and God. As a result, they get themselves expelled, rejected, from the garden, and then have to experience the inevitable, death. God’s judgment felt like rejection, like death.

So, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I will not reject anyone who comes to me.” Jesus tells us that peace comes from knowing that God does not condemn or reject us, rather, God wants to give us eternal life in the resurrection. But that requires a process of healing that wound of feeling rejected, where we must confront God’s judgment after death.

In the Catholic tradition, we believe that after death, those who have died face God’s judgment in what we call purgatory. There is sometimes a lot of fear of purgatory as a place of suffering. And for a while, All Souls’ Day was associated with fears of purgatory. People were taught that purgatory was the final punishment for sin that we have to undergo before we can enter heaven.

It came from this wounded image of God as a judge whom we need to fear lest we be rejected, and people performed many religious acts to “lessen” their time in purgatory. Out of that also came a tradition to pray for the “poor souls in purgatory.”

But the words of the Book of Wisdom in our first reading tell us not to fear:

“The souls of the just are in the hands of the Lord,
and no torment shall touch them.
If to others they seem to be punished,
yet their hope is full of immortality.”

To be in purgatory is to realize that God’s judgment is not rejection, rather, it is to be in the hands of the Lord. It is where the Holy Spirit continues to enlighten our souls through the process of coming to understand the full meaning of our lives and all our choices, both good and bad.

God is love, and to be fully united with God’s loving will, we must be fully free to love. Purgatory, therefore, is the confrontation with how we have both loved and failed to love God, our neighbor, and ourselves in this life, and it is there that we are perfected in love.

When you think of your own family members who have passed away, and you pray for them during their stage of purgatory, don’t think of them as poor souls. Rather, think of the Beatitudes, they are blessed. Blessed are they, for they are coming to full maturity and responsible freedom. Blessed are they who are in the process of entering the communion of saints that we celebrated yesterday.

One of the best ways to help our loved ones who have passed away is not simply to pray for them, but to ask them to pray for you. If purgatory is the process of being perfected in love, then they must practice charity, and the most loving act one can do is to intercede on behalf of others. That is the love that unites us to Christ on the Cross, from where he interceded for the world. It is how we remain in Christ.

The Book of Wisdom tells us,

“Those who trust in the Lord shall understand truth,
and shall abide with Him in love.”

Today we commemorate all the faithful departed. Sometimes we fear that our loved ones might be rejected by God because they struggled in their own lives. Sometimes we feel disheartened when a parent passes away with resentment in their heart, or leaves things unsettled and unreconciled. That can create deeper sorrow.

But let us not allow circumstances like that to lead us to fear. To believe in Jesus is to trust in God, and not fear. This is the trust that brings peace to our lives and turns our hearts toward those whom we have loved, and who have loved us, in a new and deeper way. Entrust your loved ones who have gone before you to the hand of God, and trust that God is a merciful judge, not one who wishes to reject, but to gather.

Paul makes the radical statement that we Christians should think of ourselves as already dead, since death is the fullness of life. He says,

“Our old self was crucified with Christ,
that we might no longer be in slavery to sin.
If we have grown into union with Christ by dying with Him,
we have confidence that we shall live with Him forever.”

The only death we need is the death to fear, that is the old self. One way to put on the new self is to think of the best qualities that our deceased loved ones have represented to us, and to strive to make those qualities more a part of our own life.

We do that with the saints, we find inspiration in how they lived their lives. We do that too with those closest to us.

As you think of your beloved dead, ask yourself, what is the most inspiring thing about them that you would want to make more a part of your life now? Remember them with joy, and ask them to pray for us, that we will grow to be the men and women they hoped we would become.

Today, we put aside any fears that we may have, and we place our trust completely in God’s love, who does not reject anyone who comes to Him, for nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.