Gospel-Homily for All Souls Day (2025)

Read the Homily

The Greatest Inheritance.

We know that when we die, we can’t take it with us. Thus, the inheritance was invented.

When my mother died, I got an inheritance: A pillow. Two years before, I was in Kohl’s department store. It was buy-one-get-one-free Monday. That means you pay a ridiculously high price for an item, and you get a second one for free.  My mother was holding a frog beanbag pillow on her lap. I tried to explain to her that if we wait until half-price Wednesday, it will be a lot cheaper. She looked up at me from her wheelchair and said, “I want two of them.” 

The aids at the nursing home really liked the pillows, so they used them to prop up my mother while she was sitting in her wheelchair. One would be under her head, and her arm would be resting on the other.  Sometimes one frog would be propping up her feet, and another supporting her back.  So every time I visited my mother, I would see the goofy pillows.

When my mother died, my father told me to take one of the pillows.” So I took it home, and every time I went to my room, I would see the frog pillow on the bed, and something amazing would happen. A flood of wonderful memories would fill my mind. The times she fed me when I was hungry, the times she clothed me when I grew out of my old clothes, the times she cared for me when I was sick. I realized that Mom left all those memories as my inheritance so that I could carry on her legacy. It is true that someday, those memories of her generosity will fade away through the passage of time here below. But they will never fade away above because she did not just store up generous sacrifices for me, she did it for Him. And God will never forget them.