For many of us there under the earth are our roots, father, mother, all those who have preceded us and have transmitted to us life, the Christian faith, and that cultural inheritance, that fabric of values upon which, even if with many contradictions, we try to build our own daily life.

This commemoration of the dead is for Christians a great celebration of the resurrection: what we have confessed, believed, and sung in the celebration of individual funerals is here re-proposed in one single day for all the dead. Death is no longer the ultimate reality for human beings, and those who are already dead, going towards Christ, are not rejected by him, but are resurrected for eternal life, a life forever with him, the One who is Risen and who is to come. There is this word of Christ, this promise of his in John’s Gospel that we should repeat in our hearts today, to overcome every sadness and every fear: “He who comes to me, him I will not reject!” (cf. Jn 6:37ff). The Christian is one who goes to the Son every day, even if in his life there are contradictions of sins and of failings, he is one who departs but returns, who falls but rises, who resumes with confidence the path of following. And Jesus does not reject him; on the contrary, embracing him in his love he grants him forgiveness of sins and leads him definitively to eternal life.