Although it’s never happened to me, I know people who have received messages from the dead in their dreams. I don’t think this is strange, even though since Sigmund Freud’s work with dreams, perhaps we’ve tended to dismiss the spiritual power of dreams, consigning them to the realm of psychology. But Scripture testifies repeatedly to the vivid ways in which dreams are part of the spiritual life.
Some people say that loved ones who have died appeared to them in dreams and urged them not to worry. Everything is going to be okay, I’m okay, is often the theme of these dreamlike messages. Why is this so hard to believe? Since we say the dead don’t really die but continue to live in Christ and if we say that we can pray for the dead and that they can pray for us, why, then, shouldn’t they occasionally visit us during our sleep to give us hope?
Maybe it’s less about the dream being something fantastical and more that hope itself seems so unearthly. Hope itself seems like nothing but a dream these days, a dream that can never really be true. In a world so afraid of death, death is the ultimate enemy, because the one thing we know for certain is that we will all die. It’s the one thing we can’t control. And when a loved one dies, and especially when it’s an untimely death, the act of death can rightly seem like the end of the world. Death is the end of the story. It’s real, and hope is a mere dream. Considering this, is it so strange, then, that the dead might wish to visit us with words of comfort that are more than a dream, words that are actually true? Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.
Dreams of reassurance about the destiny of someone who has died shouldn’t seem so odd at this time of year, which we say is a thin time when we’re especially attuned to the porous veil that lies between this world and the next. Any of us who have sat at the bedside of someone dying, know how thin that veil is. One minute there is breath, the next it is gone. “Our days are like the grass,” Psalm 103 tells us.
On All Saints’ Day, we celebrate the thinness of that diaphanous veil that separates this world from the next. We rejoice in it because it means that scattered throughout our mortal lives, we are given glimpses of that heavenly kingdom on the other side of the veil. These glimpses come to us rather like dreams where departed loved ones greet us with comforting words: Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.
Such a dreamy scene is found in the Revelation to John when the curtain between heaven and earth is pulled back for just a bit. Cast away from your brains the tendency to decipher this strange book like a code or to predict the future, and instead, encounter it as a living vision, a dream of what is to come and a dream of what already is. Imagine it as heavenly reality breaking into our world for a fleeting moment.
Envision the comfort of John’s magnificent vision to an early Church held under the boot of a ruthless empire. Behold what blessed assurance this vision must have been to those trying to follow the way of the cross, where the meekest and quietest voices were drowned amid the cacophony of violence and oppression. It’s as if the company of saints were singing into their world: Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.
It can’t be mere coincidence that the final word of the Christian Bible is that of the Book of Revelation, a word that essentially speaks to us as if in a dream: Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay. The evil you see daily, the innocent murdered victims who are the devastating casualties of human greed, the persistent naysaying voices of despair, the barbarous behavior of uncivilized civilians: yes, even all this horror is not the final word. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.
Yes, everything is going to be okay because the saints teach us, even if as in a dream, that heaven is a celebration of the ultimate truth of God’s promises. This is no false dream; this is abundantly true. With the aid of the saints, we savor all those hints of hope that God has dropped along the pilgrimage of God’s people throughout time. Do you remember the aftermath of the great flood, when Noah, his family, and the animals exited the ark? God promised never to let such destruction happen again. God set the rainbow in the sky as a reminder that the final word of our collective story is not death but life.
One of the most moving pieces of liturgical art I have ever seen is a cope—the cape-like vestment worn on special occasions, such as at the beginning of tonight’s Mass. The cope of which I’m speaking is an exquisite black cope, which is intended for a Requiem Mass, and on its hood, blazing forth from deepest black, is a bright rainbow. The rainbow means that although we recognize the darkness of death and sin and evil around us, and although they threaten to swallow us up, the final word in Christ for us is that of the rainbow. Life, not death. Hope, not despair. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.
Tonight, we bask in the promise of the rainbow, of which we catch a peek in the Book of Revelation, where a multitude of people beyond what we can count stands around the throne of God. They sing without ceasing, because making music is pure praise. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay. The curse of Babbel is undone, and all people—Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Greeks, sworn enemies of all sorts—all communicate in the language of worship and of heavenly song.
The blood-soaked clothes of martyrs like the apostle Paul and Perpetua and her companions and Lucy and Edith Stein and Jonathan Myrick Daniels and Óscar Romero have become blindingly white, washed in the eternal blood of the Lamb. In heaven, the slain Lamb is the true Shepherd because he gave his life for the sheep, and he continues to give life. The rainbow set in the sky is like encouragement in a dream. In God’s eternal realm where earthly values are inverted, death cannot have the last word. Death’s presumed power is laughable. Heaven’s dreamy message to us is the absolute truth: Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.
Everything is going to be okay because the father of all lies, the one who has continually deceived God’s people, has already been defeated and he knows it. And we have all heard his lies and accusations: that the Church will die, that we will fail, that we are foolish to hope, that the death of our spouse is the end of our own happiness, that death itself is the end of life. But they are lies. This night, God invites us to listen to the dreamy message of truth that he sends us in the lives of the saints. Life continues on the other side of suffering, sorrow, and death. The song goes on eternally. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.
We don’t need to worry because we can remember. Remember how God set his rainbow in the sky. Remember how when God’s people were famished, there was manna. Remember how when they were enslaved, God freed them. Remember how when Jerusalem was sacked, God brought the exiles back to rebuild their temple. Remember how when humanity had once again lost its way, God sent his Son to draw all people to himself. Remember that, even now, while missiles fly and bullets ricochet in schools, we should never forget that the veil between this life and the next is very thin and that the saints can speak to us in dreams. And that we can trust that everything will be okay because when everything seems lost and defeat seems near at hand, God will always make good on his promises.
The saints offer us a reassuring vision of continual praise and worship on the other side of that nearly transparent veil between this world and the next. They remind us that in our worship we are always experiencing heaven itself. In worship, we see God’s rainbow set in a sky that might normally seem as dark as night. The saints remind us that heaven will always surprise us with its capacity to include far more people than we ever can or want to imagine; it can include even us. The saints remind us that hunger and thirst and scorching heat will not conquer us because the Good Shepherd will bring us to springs of living water, and he will wipe away every tear from our eyes. This is more than a dream. It’s a dream that brings us the undeniable, living truth of God, which is as certain as the promise of the rainbow.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
All Saints’ Day
November 1, 2023