On this All Souls’ Day I am reminded of a quote from William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” We remember our beloved departed not as part of our past but as part of our present. They are still with us. We profess in our creeds “the communion of the saints,” the fact that the living and the dead are all embraced in God’s Eternal Now. We also understand the impact that the past has on our present. Like the ripples on a pond after a rock has been thrown into it the events of the past — for good or for ill — continue to have ramifications today. We must throw a rock of goodness to counteract the long-lasting negative ripples.
