Today, the Church allows a celebrant or community to choose from a great variety of readings. For this reflection I have chosen the readings for the Third Mass given in the missal for today's commemoration. The great variety of possible scriptural texts which offer some reflection on death corresponds to the universality of this experience: death is the one of the few experiences that every human being must necessarily undergo.

It is a fact of theological history that the early Church, while greatly strengthened and sustained by the hope they had in Christ, did not develop theological treatises on the virtue of hope. However they did record the "acts" of the martyrs, and these texts were the vehicle of at least some of their expressions of the meaning of hope. The single verse chosen as the second reading for this Mass contains a "beatitude", a statement about blessedness: "Blessed are those who die in the Lord". This is one of seven "beatitudes" in the Apocalypse. While the saying may arise from the author's great respect for the martyrs, our faith and the ministry of the Church opens up to all of us the great grace of dying in the Lord.