31 January 2027 · Syro-Malankara Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malabar Rite · Latin Rite · മലയാളം
“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.” John 5:24
Last Sunday we remembered the departed priests; today, Aneede Sunday, we remember all the faithful departed: our parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, children and friends. The Church does not forget them. Before we enter the Great Fast, we gather them in prayer, because Lent leads to Easter, the victory of Christ over death.
Jesus says: “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live… all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out.” St Paul writes to the Thessalonians so “that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Christian grief is real, but it is grief with hope: “so we will be with the Lord forever.”
The reading from 2 Maccabees shows that God's people prayed for the dead even before Christ. Judas Maccabeus took up a collection for a sin offering for the fallen, “for if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead”. From the beginning the Church has prayed for the departed and offered the Holy Qurbono for them, that they may be purified and enter the joy of God.
The evening Gospel reminds us how we will be judged: “I was hungry and you gave me food… just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” The best way to honour our dead is to pray for them and to live in such a way that, when our turn comes, we too may hear: “Come, you that are blessed by my Father.”
Theme: “From death to life.”
On Aneede Sunday we remember all our departed: parents, grandparents, friends. We do not come as people without hope. We come to pray for them and to learn from them how to live.
“When Jacob ended his charge to his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed, breathed his last, and was gathered to his people.” Genesis 49:33
“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.” John 5:24
Apply: Name your departed loved ones in prayer each day this week.
“Surely it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but you have held back my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back.” Isaiah 38:17
“We do not want you to be uninformed … about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.” 1 Thessalonians 4:13–14
Apply: Have a Holy Qurbono offered for your departed, and visit the cemetery with your family.
“Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and will be repaid in full.” Proverbs 19:17
“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Matthew 25:40
Apply: Do one work of mercy this week in memory of a departed loved one.
The dead hear the voice of the Son of God; those who have done good will rise to life.
Let us pray for our departed with faith and live with charity, so that one day we may meet them in the Father's house.
Take-home resolution: Pray “Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord” for the departed after each meal this week.
Dear brothers and sisters, last Sunday we remembered our departed priests. Today, Aneede Sunday, we remember all our faithful departed. Let us take a moment of silence and bring to mind those we have lost: a father, a mother, a husband, a wife, a child, a friend.
St Paul writes: we do not want you to grieve “as others do who have no hope”. He does not say “do not grieve”. Jesus himself wept at the tomb of his friend. But our grief has hope, because Christ is risen. Jesus says: “All who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out.” One day our dead will hear that voice.
Why do we pray for the dead? Our reading from Maccabees says: if Judas had not believed in the resurrection, it would have been foolish to pray for the fallen. The Church has always prayed and offered the Holy Qurbono for the departed, that they may be purified and enter fully into God's joy. St Monica asked her son Augustine only one thing before she died: “Remember me at the altar of the Lord.”
And the evening Gospel reminds us how we ourselves will be judged: “I was hungry and you gave me food… as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.” Next Sunday the Great Fast begins. Let us enter it remembering that life is short, that love is what remains, and that we too are walking towards the Lord. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. Amen.
Children, do you have a grandpa or grandma who has gone to God? Today we remember all the people we love who have died.
We feel sad, but we also have hope, because Jesus rose from the dead and he will bring them to new life.
Tonight, pray for them by name. Let's say: “Jesus, keep them happy with you in heaven!”
Lord Jesus Christ, you are the resurrection and the life. Remember all our departed brothers and sisters, our parents, relatives, friends and benefactors, and those whom no one remembers. Forgive their sins, give them eternal rest, and let perpetual light shine upon them. Amen.
Last Sunday the Church remembered her departed priests. Today, Aneede Sunday, she remembers all the faithful departed, and next Sunday the Great Fast begins. So before the road to Easter opens, the Church gathers her dead and reads about what death is, and what it is not.
The lectionary gives many readings. The Evening Gospel is the judgment of the nations, where the king says, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). The Old Testament lessons look at death from several sides. Jacob “breathed his last, and was gathered to his people” (Genesis 49:33). Sirach tells us, “Do not fear death’s decree for you” (Sirach 41:3). Hezekiah, spared from death, sings to God, “you have cast all my sins behind your back” (Isaiah 38:17). The Catholic Epistle looks ahead to “new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home” (2 Peter 3:13).
Three readings are studied here. In 2 Maccabees, Judas and his men pray and offer sacrifice for their dead. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul writes to Christians who are grieving, so that their grief may have hope in it. In John, Jesus says that the dead will hear his voice. The key words of this Sunday are sleep, hope and voice.
Setting.
Of the Old Testament lessons this one stands closest to the Gospel, since it rests its action on the hope of the resurrection. Second Maccabees was written in Greek, and presents itself as a summary of a five-volume history by Jason of Cyrene (2:23). It tells of the Jews' struggle in the second century BC, when the Seleucid king Antiochus IV tried to force Greek worship on them and profaned the Temple, and of how Judas Maccabeus and his followers recovered and rededicated it (10:1–8).
Chapter 7 of the same book has the martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons, who die confessing that “the King of the universe will raise us up” (7:9). So this is a book in which the resurrection is already a living faith. Today's passage comes after a battle against Gorgias, the governor of Idumea (12:32–37).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“So they all blessed the ways of the Lord, the righteous judge, who reveals the things that are hidden;” (12:41)
Their first reaction to finding their brothers' sin is to praise God's justice. Their second is not to condemn the dead, but to pray for them.
“He also took up a collection, man by man, to the amount of two thousand drachmas of silver, and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering.” (12:43)
Soldiers give their money for the sake of comrades who have been shown to be sinners. Many scholars think that Judas himself may have aimed first at protecting the army from guilt, as in the story of Achan (Joshua 7), and that the author draws out the deeper meaning in the comment that follows.
“For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead.” (12:44)
The reasoning is simple, and it is ours. Prayer for the dead makes sense only if they are alive to God.
“Therefore he made atonement for the dead, so that they might be delivered from their sin.” (12:45)
This is the verse the Catechism quotes (CCC 1032).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism cites this verse in its teaching on the final purification, and goes on: “From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice” (CCC 1032). In the same place it quotes St John Chrysostom, who says that if Job's sons were purified by their father's sacrifice, we should not doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation (Homilies on 1 Corinthians 41). St Augustine records the request of his mother, St Monica, as she was dying, that wherever they were they should remember her at the altar of the Lord (Confessions IX; CCC 1371). The Church also commends almsgiving and works of penance for the dead (CCC 1032), so Judas's collection has many descendants.
Setting.
This is very likely the oldest writing in the New Testament, sent by Paul about AD 50 or 51, probably from Corinth. Paul had founded the Church at Thessalonica but had been forced to leave soon after (Acts 17:1–10). Timothy has now brought him news (3:6). The young Church is firm, but some of its members have died, and those who remain are troubled: what about those who have died before the Lord's coming? Will they miss it?
Paul does not rebuke their grief. He teaches them what to do with it. “Others” in verse 13 are those who do not share the Christian hope; he is not mocking their sorrow, for he knows the weight of it, but he wants his people to have something more.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” (4:13)
He does not say “so that you may not grieve”. Jesus himself wept at the tomb of a friend (John 11:35). The difference is in the kind of grief.
“For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.” (4:14)
This is the argument in one verse. Paul does not reason from the human soul but from what happened to Jesus, and those who belong to him share it.
“Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.” (4:17)
The word to hold on to is “together”. The living and the dead are not parted in Christ. Paul's “we” may suggest that he hoped to be alive at that day, but he goes on to say that the day will come like a thief in the night (5:2), and no one knows it (compare Matthew 24:36).
“Therefore encourage one another with these words.” (4:18)
Doctrine is for comfort. Paul expects this teaching to be spoken at the bedside and at the grave.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism, quoting Philippians and this verse among others, says that “to live in heaven is to be with Christ” (CCC 1025). Because of Christ, Christian death has a positive meaning (CCC 1010). When the Catechism explains the Christian funeral, it quotes St Symeon of Thessalonica: even in death we are not separated from one another, for we all run the same course and shall find one another again in the same place (CCC 1690). St Symeon, a bishop of the city to which this letter was written, was saying the same thing many centuries later.
Setting.
Jesus has healed a man at the pool of Beth-zatha on the sabbath (5:1–9). When he is challenged, he replies, “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (5:17), and “the Jews” seek to kill him for making himself equal to God (5:18). In John this phrase often means the religious authorities who opposed him, not the Jewish people, to whom Jesus and his first disciples belonged (Nostra Aetate 4; CCC 597). Today's passage is his answer.
Later Jewish writings show the question was familiar: if God rested on the sabbath, how is it that he continues to give life and to judge? Those two works are God's own (Deuteronomy 32:39). Jesus now says that the Father has given both to the Son. Many scholars hear behind vv. 19–20 an everyday picture: a son learning his father's trade by watching him.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.” (5:24)
The verb is “has”, not “will have”. Eternal life starts at the font, not at the funeral.
“the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” (5:25)
“The dead” here are first of all those dead in spirit who are given life by his word. St Augustine distinguishes the two resurrections in this passage: of the soul now, and of the body at the end (in substance; City of God XX).
“all who are in their graves will hear his voice” (5:28)
This is plainly the bodily resurrection. The word for grave recalls a memorial tomb, a place of remembrance. No one in any grave is out of reach of that voice. Lazarus has not yet been called out (11:43), but John has prepared us.
“those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” (5:29)
This echoes Daniel 12:2. It stands beside v. 24, and the two need each other: faith is not a replacement for good deeds, and the works of faith show what we have heard. The Evening Gospel of the judgment of the nations says the same.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism quotes vv. 28–29 when it teaches that the resurrection of all the dead will come before the Last Judgment (CCC 1038). It teaches that the full right to pass definitive judgment belongs to Christ as Redeemer, as the Father has given “all judgment to the Son” (CCC 679). It also holds both sides of the “now” and the “not yet”: Christ will raise us on the last day, and yet in a certain way we have already risen with him (CCC 1002). The prayer of the Church over her dead is said in this light. They hear a voice that has already spoken to them at their baptism.
Some Bibles do not have 2 Maccabees. Why does the Church use it to support prayer for the dead?
The Catholic Church counts 2 Maccabees in the canon of Scripture (CCC 120), and so do the Orthodox Churches; the Churches of the Reformation do not, which is why some Bibles leave it out. The book is not the only ground for the practice. Even apart from its inspired status, it shows that faithful Jews were praying for their dead before Christ, as Jewish people still do in their own prayers for the departed today. From the beginning Christians did the same (CCC 958, 1032), and the inscriptions and liturgies of the early Church bear witness to it.
Is “Purgatory” only a Latin idea? Does our Syriac tradition believe it?
The word comes from the Latin tradition, and the Catechism uses it for the final purification of the elect (CCC 1030–1031). The Syriac prayers for the dead do not usually use that word or build a theory around it; they ask mercy and rest for the departed, and offer the Holy Qurbono for them. The faith underneath is one: those who die in God's friendship but are not yet fully purified can be helped by the prayers of the Church. The Council of Florence, which met with Eastern bishops, taught this, while leaving aside the fiery images found in some Western preaching.
Does 1 Thessalonians 4:17 teach a “rapture”, with Christians secretly taken away from the earth?
No. Some modern preachers have read it so, but the Church does not. The passage is about the Lord's public coming, announced with “the sound of God's trumpet” (4:16). Paul's point is that the living and the dead will be with him together. His images come from the Bible's own language of God's coming, and the Catechism teaches the coming of Christ in glory and the final judgment, not a secret removal (CCC 1001, 1038).
Aneede means “the departed” in Syriac. In the Malankara calendar, the Sunday of the departed priests (Kohne) and this Sunday of all the departed stand just before the Great Fast, as if the Church wants all her members with her as she goes up to Easter. In every Holy Qurbono the Thubden names the faithful departed. Today many families will also go to the graves of their own. It is good to bring the children, to say the names of those we never met, and to tell them that those we pray for are not forgotten: the Son's voice reaches them. It is also good to do what the Evening Gospel asks in their memory: to feed someone who is hungry, as Judas's soldiers gave what they had.