Sitting at mass this morning, the first blush of Spring appearing in the fields, the sound of birds in the air again, I hear Fr. Stephen, the gospel reader for the week, proclaim the words: "The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God" . . . and I'm thinking about that. The dead can hear God's voice. It's true. Somehow, I know those words are true. A month ago, the wind was so biting, the snow and ice so packed and steely hard, the fertile earth so "encased" in a tomb of ice, one might have despaired of ever seeing a green thing growing again. The earth warms, the snow and ice vanish; nature, like one long dead responds to a kiss from the sun. She blushes. She is awake. The earth begins to teem with things growing again. I remember the wife of the man who rushed on the terrorists on September 11 who brought down the plane intended for the Pentagon into an empty field. Just before he put his plan into action, he had been talking to her on his cell phone. He told her he loved her and their children, asked her to pray for him and said good-bye. Minutes later the plane went down and everyone on board perished. She said she couldn't bring herself to turn off her cell phone. She left it on and let the battery run down. His voice—it had always been so expressive of his love for her. She knew when his voice was silenced, it would be the end of their relationship in this world. Jesus says: "The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God." But to hear, to be awake to the sound of another's voice, means you are in relationship with that person. If this woman's husband could still talk to her; share with her all that was in his heart from moment to moment . . . then, he would be alive to her. Another memory bubbles up. I am leaning over the bed of Fr. Marcellus, a monk, 97 years old, who the nurse is telling me "is in a coma". Fr. Marcellus is a meteoric personality, bigger than life, loud, opinionated, brash, with a terrific booming voice—the voice of a Roman Senator that could put across his convictions in a way you would never forget. Somehow I just couldn't picture this guy in a coma. Another monk and I are visiting him in the hospital. Informed by the nurse that he is "in a coma"—I wonder. Leaning close to his ear, I say "Fr. Marcellus if you can hear my voice, open your eyes." Instantly, he opens both his beautiful blue eyes like a strong man lifting a barbell with his eye lids. He never makes a sound, but he's talking to us: "Can I hear you? Of course I can hear you—you idiots!" He is back. He can hear our voice and we can hear his voice. Instantly, the relationship is restored. Each of us is called into this world by a voice, the voice of our mother nursing us, putting us to bed at night. "You are not here alone", the voice says. "I am here, and I wonder who you are!" The first time you heard this voice, you realized love was a possibility for you. To hear this voice is to live. Maybe the reason we honor the dead the way we do is because we have an intuition about the dead—I mean, that they can hear this voice. But that's a no-brainer isn't it? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. All are alive to God. You already knew that.

Father Raphael