A single desire pulses beneath every distraction, every ambition, every fear: to be loved and to love in return. God did not fashion us because he lacked company; the Trinity is eternal communion. He wanted creatures who could share the joy he is. We were made for love—real, infinite, unexhausted.
Yet reaching for that desire is not easy. Sin crowds the heart. Pride distorts. Greed narrows. Selfishness turns us in on ourselves until we confuse appetite for love. Seeing this, the Father sent the Son to reopen the way home. Jesus shows that love is not a feeling we hoard but a life we receive and learn to give. He conquers the very sins that steal what we most long for and offers grace so we can begin again and again. Holiness, for most of us, is not a clean sprint; it is a long walk with stumbles, hand in hand with mercy.
That is why this day matters. We bring before God the ordinary faithful—the ones who tried. The grandmother who prayed but fretted. The friend who loved generously yet battled temper. The parishioner who showed up every Sunday, confessed the same sins, and kept hoping for more. They wanted the love for which they were made, though their hearts were not yet wide enough to hold it. Death did not make that desire vanish; it made it urgent. So the Lord, who is both justice and kindness, completes in them what he began—he purifies, not to punish, but to unbar the doors of the heart.
Listen to the promise which grounds our hope: “I will not reject anyone who comes to me.” This is why our prayers today are not sentimental gestures. They are acts of faith in the will of the Father revealed by the Son—that no one entrusted to him be lost, that those who look to him with trust be raised on the last day. Our opening prayer asked that faith in Jesus, raised from the dead, deepen our hope for our departed. The altar answers that prayer. Here the great mystery of love binds the living and the dead; one sacrifice, one Christ, one Body.
Think of purgatory as the last lesson in love. Not a waiting room with a clock on the wall, but the final healing of the heart—attachments loosened, wounds cleansed, cramped loves stretched until they can welcome the immensity of God. When we offer the mass and our sacrifices for the dead, we are cooperating with that healing. We place their names inside the flow of Christ’s mercy and ask that the Lord hasten their passage to light and peace.
And what about us? We keep trying. We say yes again. We confess and return. We forgive quickly. We practice gratitude. We let the Eucharist tutor our hearts in self-gift. If to be a Christian is to aim beyond our strength, then to be a Christian is also to rely beyond our strength—on the one who never tires of raising the fallen.
So we pray with confidence: Lord, finish in our beloved dead what you have begun. And in us, too. Stretch our hearts now, so that when you call us, we are ready for the love for which we were made.