I was listening to a reflection on All Souls Day on the Vatican Radio Station by Monsignor Peter Fleetwood of the Archdiocese of Liverpool in England. He saw the feast of All Souls Day not only as a time of remembrance, but also as a time for us to respond to the grief, sadness, and loss we feel in our hearts at the death of a loved one. All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and the month of November are a time of the year when we are called to dedicate time and prayer to the memory of our dearly departed loved ones. When a loved ones departs this world, we miss them dearly. We do not entirely get used to this new reality. Our liturgies in the Church during November recognize the need to remember and commemorate our deceased loved ones.
Today’s celebration of All Souls Day is based on the theological basis that some souls who have departed from this world have not been perfectly cleansed from their sins or have not fully atoned for past transgressions. These souls are in purgatory until they complete a process of cleansing and purification. We assist those souls through our prayers, through works of mercy and charity, and through the sacrifice of the Holy Mass. But rather than seeing purgatory in a negative way, we are called to see purgatory as a positive aspect of our relationship with God, since with these sins and transgressions not yet purged from their souls, these souls not yet ready for unification with our Lord.
Our readings on All Souls Day remind us that God’s grace touches our lives in different ways. The Book of Wisdom was written in the first century before the birth of Christ, reflecting the belief in the afterlife that was developing in the Jewish community of that era. Many people of that day thought that an earthly death meant the end point for that person. Yet, the author of Wisdom states that these souls are still alive in the eternal life they have in God. They are in the hands of God, where he will take care of them. In the trials and sufferings they went through in their lives on earth, they souls were proved worthy by God’s grace of immortality in the next life with God. St Paul reaffirms this by asserting that our baptism in Christ unifies us and makes us one in his Body and Blood, making us into new beings who are free sin, rising to holiness in life. Reaffirming the thoughts of the author of Wisdom, St Paul sees the grace of God working in us, bringing us to a newness of life that will live forever, to the immortal destiny we have in Christ. United with the community of saints that we celebrated yesterday on All Saints Day, we pray for the faithful departed today, especially for the souls in purgatory, as we are one with them in our common faith.
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