All Souls Day

Parents sometimes tease their little children when passing a cemetery with the question, "How many dead people are in there?"  The children try to count tombstones as the car speeds by.  The joke's answer is, "All of them!"  This is not true, however; in fact, all of them are ALIVE in Christ Jesus!  This is what we celebrate today: those who are faithful followers of Jesus NEVER die.  Those who follow Him into death follow Him into new life.  As Jesus is glorified, so will they be, too.

This festival commemorating the faithful departed is a popular one among many people and cultures.  It is also comforting, reassuring and hope-filled.  It is comforting in that Jesus rejects no one the Father has given to Him and raises to new life those who have been buried with Him in baptism.  It is reassuring in that "the just are in the hand of God" (Wisdom 3:1) .  It is hope-filled because it "is the will" of the Father that anyone who believes in Jesus will "have eternal life" (John 6:37-38).  We celebrate this festival confident of the Good News that our beloved faithful departed are within the embrace of God.

We must keep in mind on this festival that we are celebrating, in a real sense, an "anticipatory All Saints' Day."  These souls that we commemorate today are not damned in hell; they have remained faithful to their baptismal promises and so so have the promise of eternal glory.  They just need our prayers to help purify them and enable them to enter into that eternal glory.

There are several wonderful treatices and works by spiritual writers and saints on Purgatory.  We fail to recognize, many of us, how much the holy souls in Purgatory NEED US and our prayers to help them be finally purified to enter into Heaven.  The following is a short section of a "Treatise on Purgatory" from Saint Catherine of Genoa:

CHAPTER XIII

     The souls in Purgatory are no longer in a state to acquire
     merit. How these souls look on the charity exercised for them in
     the world.

If the souls in Purgatory could purge themselves by contrition, they would 
pay all their debt in one instant such blazing vehemence would their 
contrition have in the clear light shed for them on the grievousness of 
being hindered from reaching their end and the love of God.

Know surely that not the least farthing of payment is remitted to those 
souls, for thus has it been determined by God's justice. So much for what 
God does as for what the souls do, they can no longer choose for 
themselves, nor can they see or will, save as God wills, for thus has it 
been determined for them.

And if any alms be done them by those who are in the world to lessen the 
time of their pain, they cannot turn with affection to contemplate the 
deed, saving as it is weighed in the most just scales of the divine will. 
They leave all in God's hands who pays Himself as His infinite goodness 
pleases. If they could turn to contemplate the alms except as it is within 
the divine will, there would be self in what they did and they would lose 
sight of God's will, which would make a Hell for them. Therefore they await 
immovably all that God gives them, whether pleasure and happiness or pain, 
and never more can they turn their eyes back to themselves.

Although November 2 (and the entire month of November) is the time when the Church traditionally remembers the faithful departed, we would do well to remember the deceased throughout the year because they are constant reminders that death leads to life.  It might be good practice for our Christian lives not only to keep Fridays as days of penance, but also to pray regularly on Friday's for the faithful departed.  This is a kind of service, too - that we never forget those who have touched our lives and whom we have loved and who has loved us.  

While this would be an excellent, year-long practice, today, All Souls Day, we not only remember the dead, but we apply our efforts, through prayer, almsgiving, and the Mass, to their release from Purgatory.  There are two indulgences attached to All Souls Day, one for visiting a church and another for visiting a cemetery.  While the actions are performed by the living, the merits of the indulgences are applicable only to the souls in Purgatory.

Praying for the dead is a Christian obligation.  In the modern world, when many have come to doubt the Church's teaching on Purgatory, the need for such prayers has only increased.  The Church devotes the month of November to prayer for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, and participation in the Mass of All Souls Day is a good way to begin the month.

Here at Saint Andrew the Apostle Parish we will commemorate All Souls Day in several ways:

• Of course, there was Mass today at 8am.
• Throughout the month of November, the "Book of Remembrance" will be on display in the front of the church.  In it we have written the names of all our parishioners who have died over the past year.  Others have added the names of friends and family members who have also died since last November 2.
• On Sunday, November 7, we will hold our annual Commemoration of the Faithful Departed.  We have invited family members of those who died this past year to return to the parish for this celebration of Evening Prayer for the dead.  During the service, people will be invited to come forward to light a candle in memory of their loved one.