All Saints Day / All Souls Day

by Fr. John Granato  |  10/29/2023  |  Words from Fr. John

My Dear Friends,

This week we celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, more commonly known as Halloween, the evening before our Holy Day of Obligation, All Saints’ Day. The day following All Saints’ is All Souls’ Day. On this day we commemorate all who have died and are still in need of prayers before they enter into the presence of God in his eternal Glory. Throughout the month of November, we will remember our loved ones in the Book of the Dead as well as in our All Souls envelopes, which are placed on the altar at Mass for the thirty days of November.

In the communion of the saints that we profess in the Apostles’ Creed, we connect ourselves to all the men and women who have come before us and have died in the Lord. The Catholic Church calls this communion the threefold, Church Militant (those living now on earth), the Church Triumphant (those on Heaven in the presence of God – the Beatific Vision), and the Church Suffering (those who have died and our in Purgatory awaiting the final purging in order to be cleansed and pure before they approach God in his glory).

The Church Militant prays for the souls in Purgatory as well as praying for ourselves and our brothers and sisters who are still living. The Church Militant also asks the saints in Heaven to pray for us. The souls in Purgatory pray for the members of the Church Militant.

The Church Triumphant prays for all of us. Praying for others is an act of charity. Asking the saints to pray for us is an act of faith that they desire for us to join them in the Beatific Vision. When we pray for the souls in Purgatory, they remember that act of charity and they return the favor for our helping them to see God more quickly. This is a relative term since there is no time in eternity, so we cannot say that a soul has so many years or days in Purgatory and that time moves quickly, but in our limited understanding of eternity, we use the terms that we do know and understand to help us explain the importance of praying for others.

So let us lift each other up in prayer, especially at the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and let us ask the saints to continue to intercede for us, our families, our country, and our church.