The cyclical observance of All Saints’ Day reflects the liturgical care for our dead. It is the echo of a hope that has persisted through the centuries: what the German philosopher Robert Spaemann called the “immortal rumor,” background noise that refuses to go away. The peculiarity of man is that life does not end with death, but continues in memory and beyond memory. I discovered this truth when the Columbine High School massacre took place in the United States on April 20, 1999. That day, around the same time in New Jersey, a Nicaraguan Evolutionary Anthropology professor explained in class how Neanderthals buried their dead next to flower necklaces. When I came home and saw the news on TV, I thought, humanity is always on the side of life.
