All Souls' Day
/All Souls’ Day
2 November 2022
Those who have come to faith and who have been baptized are numbered among God’s holy ones, the saints. Though we tend to normally think of the term “saint” in its most restrictive, specific meaning, -- that is, the canonized saints – we should be aware that the term has wider meanings too. Yesterday the Church placed before us one such wider use of the term “saint” in that we commemorated in one celebration all the anonymous holy ones who are in heaven but whose lives are not as known as the canonized saints. Today the Church reminds us that we should not forget the souls of the just who have passed from this life and who may still be awaiting full entrance into heaven after some period of cleansing purification, a time of purgation. For the souls in Purgatory are among that widest meaning of “saint”, including we baptized who are still among the Church Militant on earth. The Church annually commemorates the souls of all who have died in Christ on All Souls’ Day, November 2nd. This commemoration of all the baptized dead necessarily makes us confront death, that reality that is, at times, foreseen and sometimes sudden, but always mysterious for at one moment a person is alive and with us, and the next moment he is not.
When a person dies in the body he passes beyond this veil. The body deteriorates and the soul, being spiritual and eternal, lives on awaiting the General Resurrection at the end of time. A soul that dies in unrepented mortal sin, dies in separation from God and remains in that state for all eternity in Hell. A soul that dies in the perfect state of grace, has immediate passage for all eternity to heaven. Yet, we recognize, too, another class of possibility: that is, those souls who at the time of death are not guilty of unrepented mortal sin and so are just, are holy, but who are not perfectly holy. They are just souls, souls in the state of grace, and while, ultimately destined for Heaven, they have lesser sins, imperfections, and temporal punishment to be completed to make repair for past sinfulness. There are two things to consider when we pray for the deceased. The first is that we are called in charity to pray for all the deceased. It is a gift to them. It is the right thing to do. We should hope that all people repent and desire the eternal life God generously offers. But, we do not know the state of a person’s soul. We are not the judge. The second thing to consider is, what happens to our prayers? What happens, in other words, to the grace of the prayerful gift we make for souls? It must be noted that while we pray for all the deceased, our prayers cannot assist a soul in separation from God because there is no help that can be given such a soul. It also must be noted that our prayers do not assist a soul in perfect grace who goes immediately to Heaven, because such a soul has no need of any help. Our prayers can and do assist those just souls in Purgatory who are enduring purification as they await fullness of heavenly life, which is the destiny of all souls in Purgatory. We call these souls the poor souls because, while in the state of grace, they need our help.
We pray and we must leave to God to apply that gift to those souls who need our help and who may receive it. We categorize these souls as the souls in Purgatory. In charity we should not forget them. We should aid them by the merits of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by that laudable and long-standing custom of having Masses offered for the deceased. We offer prayers for specific souls, those of our relatives and friends. But we should also maintain prayer more generically for all the souls in Purgatory. The indulgence associated with visiting a cemetery and praying for the dead, which we have been promoting, is another great gift to offer the poor souls. In doing all this, we hope that we ourselves will not be forgotten when we pass, for we may well need all of God’s holy ones to assist us in our purgation.
The All Souls’ Day Masses, like a funeral Mass, or any requiem Mass, is marked by a certain somber atmosphere. You see many visual cues of this somber atmosphere before you. The vesture of the sacred ministers is traditionally black, the color associated with mourning and death. The altar and tabernacle, because it is the place from which the Bread of Life comes to us, is never vested in the color of death, but is vested in purple as a reminder that repentance is needed in the face of impending death and also as a reminder that our penances assist the poor souls in need. This year I revived an older long-standing catholic custom, that of using unbleached candles. I knew of this custom for a long time but I never bothered to do anything about it. What finally pushed me over the edge was seeing unbleached candles used at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral. I decided I was tired of Anglicans getting to do Catholic things while Catholics do not! The bright white of festivity, the normal color of our candles, gives way to the more somber unbleached candle. All this points to our confrontation with the mystery that we cannot avoid on All Souls’ Day: the mystery of the soul’s passage through death to eternal life.
It is our faith that at the General Judgment, at the end of time, the bodies of the deceased will rise to be reunited with the soul, as is our proper way to exist as human beings. The soul will then experience its eternal judgment in the resurrected body. The question is what kind of eternity, what kind of judgment will it be? As we heard in the Gospel (cf. Jn. 5:24-19), will it be a resurrection of life, meaning heaven? Or a resurrection of condemnation, meaning hell? For we, the saints still on earth, we have the current gift of time to repent, to pray, to confess our sins, to grow in virtue, and to be nourished by the saving gift of the Holy Eucharist. We join the saints in heaven in praying for the Poor Souls. And we humbly entrust those who have died to the generous mercy of God, through the spotless hands of Mary, the Mother of Mercy. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.