Dear friends, the Solemnity of All Saints and the Commemoration of the faithful departed tell us that only he who is able to recognize a great hope in death is able also to live a life that springs from hope. If we reduce man exclusively to his horizontal dimension, to what can be perceived empirically, life itself loses its profound meaning. Man needs eternity -- and every other hope, for him, is all too brief, is all too limited. Man is explainable only if there is a Love that overcomes all isolation -- even that of death -- in a totality that transcends even space and time. Man is explainable -- he finds his deepest meaning -- only if God is. And we know that God has gone forth from the distance and has made Himself close; He has entered into our lives and He tells us: "I am the Resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die" (John 11:25-26).
Let us think for a moment of the scene at Calvary and let us listen once again to the words that Jesus addressed on the Cross to the robber crucified at his right: "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43). Let us think of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, when -- after having travelled a stretch of road with the Risen Jesus -- they recognize Him and quickly set out toward Jerusalem to announce the Lord's resurrection (cf. Luke 24:13-35). The Master's words come to mind with renewed clarity: "Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?" (John 14:1-2).Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, November 2, 2011.God has truly appeared; He has become accessible; He has so loved the world "that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16), and in the supreme act of love -- in the Cross -- plunging into the abyss of death, He conquered it, He rose and He opened the doors of eternity also to us. Christ sustains us through the night of death, which He himself traversed: He is the Good Shepherd, in whose guidance we can trust without any fear, since He knows well the road, even in obscurity.
