A few years ago, All Souls Day fell on the first Friday of November,
and so I visiting and bringing Holy Communion to some of our homebound
parishioners. My first stop was to a woman named Josephine, and elderly woman
with a thick polish accent, to whom I had been bringing Communion for several
years.
I asked her if she had any particular intentions she would
like to offer as she received Holy Communion, and she said, since today is the
Feast of All Souls she would like to pray for her husband and her father who were
arrested and killed in the Concentration Camp at Aushwitz during World War II. After we prayed, and she received Holy
Communion, she asked if I would like to see a picture of her father. I said I would.
She went into the bedroom and brought out a rectangular
photograph of very thin man, dressed in a prison outfit, in three poses: a
profile looking to the right, one where he was looking up and to the left, and
the middle one, he was looking directly at the camera with a haunted
expression.
I thought of the horrors he witnessed—they seemed reflected
in his eyes--and I had to sit down.
Josephine then said, Father, I try to think of good
memories, but so often I am overwhelmed with sadness. Why do we always remember the hurtful things?
After a moment, I said, I think it’s important not to forget
our loved ones, as hurtful as their memories are, so that we can pray for them,
and to pray that terrible things like war and genocide never happen again.
She said, “All Souls Day is always a very sad day for me,
but it is also the anniversary of our coming to this country and escaping those
horrors.” How fitting, I thought because
that’s what All Souls is all about. Today we pray that our loved ones arrive at
their heavenly homeland.
Today can be a sad day, to remember the faithful departed
whom we loved in this life can evoke strong emotions. And we simply don’t pray for those who were
good to us in this life, but also those who may have hurt us—they need our
prayers too. No matter who they were in life, how they acted, who they loved or
hurt, we pray for all of the souls in purgatory today, that they may be open to
all of the purification they need in order to enter eternal life with God.
Today is also a day of hope, because we hope to be reunited
with our loved ones in the new and eternal life of the resurrection. That word
hope was mentioned in the opening prayer: “Listen kindly to our prayers, O
Lord, and, as our faith in your Son, raised from the dead, is deepened, so may
our hope of resurrection for your departed servants also find new strength.” The
preface for the Eucharistic prayer will also speak of the hope of resurrection.
We also acknowledge today the power of our prayers. Our prayers are powerful and effective in
helping those in purgatory make their way to God and to prepare for the
resurrection.
When are overwhelmed with grief for our loved ones the best
thing to do is to turn to God in prayer for their souls and to renew our hope in
the resurrection. As Saint Thomas Aquinas said that the greatest act of love we
can perform on behalf of the dead is to pray for them. So we continue the celebration of the Mass
for the repose of their souls, not as a mere remembrance, but as a powerfully
effective way of loving them and helping them, for the glory of God and the
salvation of souls.
That Christ, Son of the
Living God, who raised up Lazarus from the dead, will raise up to life all the
dead who have been redeemed by his precious blood. We
pray to the Lord.
That Christ, consoler of all who mourn, who dried the tears of the family
of Lazarus, the widow’s son, and the daughter of Jairus, will bring comfort to
all those who mourn for the dead. We pray to the
Lord.
That Christ, our Savior, will destroy the reign of sin in our earthly
bodies, and grant us eternal life. We pray to the
Lord.
That Christ, our Redeemer, will look on all those who have no hope
because they do not know him, and bring them to faith in the resurrection and
in the life of the world to come. We pray to the
Lord.
For all those who have
died. For our beloved dead who we pray for in a special way today, this All
Souls day and during the month of November, for all of the poor souls in
purgatory, for those who have fought and died for our country’s freedom, that
those who we remember in prayer may pass over to a dwelling place of light and
peace. We pray to the Lord.
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