A Meditation for All Souls’ Day:
How Has the Love of Others Changed Your Life?
by Terrance Klein
November 1, 2019

You can deepen your life of prayer by practicing meditation. St. Francis de Sales taught that this was simply bringing thoughts and images into your mind so as to move the heart and will toward God. Scripture, songs, nature, the writings of the saints: They are all fodder for meditation.

You cannot count how many people you have met in life, but you can trace the transformation that certain people have brought into your life. They could and did change who you are as a person because our human nature is pliable, subject to growth.

Here is a meditation. Think of the men and women who made you the person you are. Then let your heart give way to gratitude:

Your mom, teaching you to bake.
The coach, who taught you to love the sport and to excel at it.
The teacher, who introduced you to the love of reading.
The older sibling, who modeled how to deal with challenges.
The aunt, who listened to you and made you an empathetic person.
The kid, two years ahead of you in high school, who did not belittle you, who made you believe the coming adult world would not be so bad.
Ponder these people and try to imagine how different your life would be if you had never encountered them. How can you not be moved to gratitude for who they are and what they have brought into your life?

Then, consider what comes after this life. Here, all ebbs and flows. We gain, and we suffer loss. In contrast, heaven can be defined as our joyful fruition. Nothing can be lost, nothing drops from the hand of God. There is no weakening or wilting.

The lives of the saints involve a satiety, a true and lasting satisfaction, but heaven is not stasis, not an eternal stillness. Why not? Because God is the source of all creativity! So heaven cannot be a lovely mausoleum. It must be a mill of blessing and life.