All Souls

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“For everything, there is a season,” we're told in the Book of Ecclesiastes, “and a time for every matter under heaven; a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted” (Eccles. 3:1-2).

All go to one place, all are from dust, and all turn to dust again. The Liturgy of the Church also reminds us every Ash Wednesday that we are dust, and to dust we shall return (Gen. 3:19).

Every year the Church gives us this Commemoration of the Souls of the Faithful Departed.

It's a rather beautiful custom whereby the Church invites us to stop and to look back at those who have gone before us, and to remember them with supernatural charity, to pray for them if they may still be in Purgatory, that they may go to heaven.

I saw a painting of a priest once who was saying Mass, and under the altar there were the souls in Purgatory, and as he was saying Mass, souls were going up to heaven.

The Church invites us to pray for those souls in Purgatory and to learn a lot from their lives.

The Church has granted a plenary indulgence for anyone who visits a cemetery or place where people are buried, even if they're not Catholics, on the first eight days of November. We can get a plenary indulgence applicable to the souls in Purgatory.

When we commit a mortal sin, we merit eternal blame and eternal punishment. When we go to confession, the eternal blame is forgiven, and some of the eternal punishment is changed into temporal punishment (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Points 1472-1473).

When we commit a venial sin, we merit temporal blame and temporal punishment. When we go to confession, the temporal blame is forgiven, and some of the temporal punishment is taken away also.

At the end of our lives, there is a large amount of temporal punishment that still remains for the sins which have been forgiven.

We can use the little contradictions or crosses of this world: the headaches, the failures, the reverses of fortune, to satisfy for this temporal punishment while we're here on earth. And if not, we go to Purgatory to satisfy for it there.

A plenary indulgence is a remission of that temporal punishment that is due for the sins that have been forgiven, and we can apply that to the souls in Purgatory.

We can also gain a plenary indulgence on the Day of the Faithful Departed of all Souls by visiting a church and praying an Our Father and a Creed. And that can gain a plenary indulgence applicable to the souls in Purgatory.

It's interesting that the Church encourages us to gain these indulgences. Part of the Christian formation of children embraces the gaining of those indulgences.

Notice how the Church encourages us to visit a cemetery or a place where people are buried in the first eight days of November. On the other days of November, we can gain a partial indulgence by doing the same thing.

But why does the Church encourage us specifically to go to a cemetery? Because there are many lessons to be learned there: it's catechetical, it's formative. It focuses us a little bit on death and on the last things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.

The vast expanse of cemeteries where everybody is at the same level and the silence of cemeteries also carry their own message.

We teach children about the reality of death and what death is. It is the separation of the soul from the body, but the soul goes on living.

The Liturgy of the Church, the Masses for the Dead, and the Preface for the Dead talk about the bright promise of immortality.

Death for a Christian can be a very beautiful thing. It's not something to be afraid of or seen as a punishment. It's the gateway to eternal life (cf. Catechism, Point 1021).

In cemeteries, children can learn about the immortality of the soul, the beautiful truth of our faith. It can be a reminder to take care of our soul through prayer, through the sacraments.

It's also a reminder that we have each other on loan. Someday, my mother and my father will go to be with God. It's a message we have to transmit to our children, and they have to transmit to their children. It's the law of life. It's a normal thing.

And since the resurrection of Christ, death is an Easter, a passage. We lay aside the bodily exterior with which we could not move into the divine atmosphere.

The worn and withered shells of the bodies of the dead have value only for God. They return to being dust. But we continue to live, to know, to love, without being limited by the fragility of our bodies or hindered by the shackles of sin.

The truth of the immortality of the soul can give great consolation and comfort when we experience the death of a loved one.

Death is a passage into life that man is prepared for here below, and that continues with God, without end. Death places us in the infinity of the depths of God. Through Christ, eternal life becomes tangible. Death is a passage towards Christ (cf. Catechism, Point 1005).

This life is an antechamber of a great happiness—the wedding feast. It's our privilege and joy to look forward to that wedding feast when everything becomes finished here in this valley of tears.

The soul and the body are made to be together. And so, we believe that one day there will be the resurrection of our bodies on the last day. They will enjoy the company of God forever in heaven.

If we live for ourselves, we are necessarily unhappy. If we live for Christ, we already have one foot in eternity. The combat ceases only with the final heartbeat. We cross the threshold to eternity.

Death is enlightened, entirely enlightened, by the mystery of faith. If the end stops in a hole in the ground, then life is not worth the trouble. Cemeteries lift up our gaze to look at something over, above, and beyond, greater than ourselves. It leads us to laugh at this life and to laugh at death.

There is a monastery of Capuchins on the Via Veneto in Rome where there are five or six chapels that are decorated from floor to ceiling, with the bones of monks from ages past: plenty of femurs and tibia and fibula and humeri. They decorate that place. Heaps of skulls, vertebrae, ribs. Embalmed monks fixed in perpetual stillness, re-clothed in their habits, imitating postures of prayer.

At the entrance, there is a placard that warns visitors: we were like you; you will be like us. It's very salutary from time to time to have these reminders of what is ahead so that we prepare for that.

St. Paul says to the Philippians, “The body is dead, but the spirit is living” (Rom. 8:10). St. Thérèse of Lisieux said: I do not die, I enter into life” (cf. St. Thérèse of Lisieux, The Last Conversations).

We could consecrate our death to God. If God has chosen us out before the foundation of the world, He's also chosen the moment and the manner of our death. It's a moment of grace. We can thank God for it. It will be the best possible death that God could give us.

We don't have to worry about it, but just accept it with humility and prepare for it. In many ways, it's “the most important act of earthly existence. All life is made to explode, to go further—to merge with Life with a capital L, with God” (Robert Cardinal Sarah, Introduction to Nicolas Diat, A Time to Die: Monks on the Threshold of Eternal Life).

Pope Francis has recently spoken about the spiritual emptiness of the world (Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Querida Amazonia, Point 108, February 2, 2020; Angelus, June 19, 2016), a materialistic world where death is a fearful reality.

One writer said: “Never before has the relationship to death been so impoverished as in this time of spiritual desolation, when men, in their rush to exist, seem to avoid all mystery” (Nicolas Diat, A Time to Die: Monks on the Threshold of Eternal Life).

“Denial of death pervades our present times. Modern man has an obsessive fear—‘God is dead’ (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science) and so is death” (ibid.).

When John Paul Sartre, a French existentialist, went to visit that Capuchin monastery in the Via Veneto and saw all those dead bones, he thought it was a sick joke.

“The West has worked hard to bury death more deeply in the vaults of its history,” but our message to twenty-first-century man is that “he's not condemned to lonely endings, without love, in anonymous hospital rooms.”

St. Joseph is the patron of a happy death.

“A peaceful approach to death lies in humility and simplicity. When death approaches, its hand reveals its strength.”… We can be “like happy and naive children who wait with impatience to open a gift.”

An elderly nun in Asia told me many years ago: she was “waiting in joyful hope.” I thought that was a beautiful phrase. She was well into her 90s. She led a very fulfilled life, taking care of all sorts of orphanages and poor children in all sorts of places. She had an awful lot to look forward to.

“Waiting in joyful hope.” It's a phrase from the Mass. It comes just after the Our Father. We can be like happy and naive children waiting in joyful hope. “They have no doubts about the fulfillment of the promise.

“A spiritual life doesn't prevent us from loving the earth. On the contrary, we love it differently, and perhaps more, because the earth is more beautiful with the eyes of faith. Nature is more beautiful, souls are more beautiful, human relationships are more beautiful” (Father Michel quoted in Diat, A Time to Die)—because we know where we come from, where we're going, what life is all about.

We look forward to the eternal wedding feast, eternal happiness, where every tear will be wiped away. That bright promise of immortality—it's worth waiting for; it's worth longing for; it's worth getting there.

And if ever we see how God may carry away a person in the prime of life, it may be that God just wants to show men that He is the Lord of life and that we are not the masters of death. He has His reasons, and it's not given to us to understand them.

Death is the time for the realization of the promises of the faith. Suddenly life stops; God comes and goes away with our brother or with our sister.

Without God, man is an utter absurdity. And all life is a school—a school that tells us and reminds us to make good use of our time—perhaps to think about death.

Thinking about death is not morbid. On the contrary, it enables us to have an understanding of the meaning of life, helps us to learn to recognize the end of our road. Why be afraid?

The resurrection is the foundation of our faith (cf. Catechism, Points 642, 655, 989; Rom. 1:4). Real life is not on earth. Every day we must prepare to die. And the greatest way to do that is to live in the state of grace. To live the life of grace, to be close to the sacraments because we don't know what hour and what day is going to be our last. Our Lord may come like “a thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5:2, Rev. 16:15).

“The strength of a person's prayer throughout their life will very much influence their approach to old age and death. … The stronger the supernatural life, the greater the familiarity with the afterlife and the simpler the death” (Dom Thevenin, quoted in Diat, A Time to Die).

God is infinitely merciful, but also, we must remember that He's infinitely just. He will ask us to atone for all our sins. We all know that we're going to die so we should live life accordingly.

“How could men remain indefinitely in this valley of tears? We are born to meet God. … Death is the end of this school. And afterward, there comes Paradise. The person who's given their life to God and has never met Him—it's normal for them to be impatient to see Him. In the poems of St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross, they talk about how they die from not dying.

“To our great regret, the Holy Spirit is not in a hurry to come for us. .. In the final months, Christ has already taken hold of the elderly. The worn-out body returns to the earth, but it is to await the glory of its resurrection. We do not know yet what our body is, its beauty, its glory, and its light. The most beautiful, by far, is yet to come” (Dom Innocent, quoted in Diat, A Time to Die).

And so, “death is a final exam that's easy to pass. And eternal life is like summer vacation. Earthly life is a simple school for understanding God…and, after the exam, we leave on other paths (Diat, A Time to Die).

The Book of the Apocalypse (Revelation) says, “Then I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Write this: Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord.’ ‘Blessed indeed,’ says the Spirit, ‘that they may rest from their labor, for their deeds follow them’” (Rev. 14:13).

There's a famous poem by an English poet called James Shirley called Death the Leveller that says:

“The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armor against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Scepter and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field,
And plant fresh laurels where they kill:
But their strong nerves at last must yield;
They tame but one another still:
Early or late
They stoop to fate,
And must give up their murmuring breath
When they, pale captives, creep to death.

The garlands wither on your brow,
Then boast no more your mighty deeds!
Upon Death's purple altar now
See where the victor-victim bleeds.
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb:
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.”

This day invites us to consider the souls in Purgatory, the Church suffering. The Preface of Christian Death says, “For your faithful people, life is changed, not ended. When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death, we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven” (Roman Missal, Preface of Christian Death I).

We consider those souls and try to help them get into heaven. They cannot earn anymore, their time for earning is over, but they can pray for us. Devotion to the souls in Purgatory can be a very good devotion. They can do all sorts of little favors for us.

“We rise at your word to the glory of the Resurrection,” says the Preface of Christian Death. “Your loving kindness calls us back to life” (Roman Missal, Preface of Christian Death IV).

Purgatory is a place of purification. It's a waiting room of heaven, not a lesser hell, but a place of preparation where souls are truly cleansed of the remains of sin before entering heaven.

Purgatory reminds us of sin and our inclination to sin, which we acquire through original sin, and which is increased by personal sin.

If we haven't sufficiently atoned for any specific offenses against God during the course of our earthly life, there's a further need for reparation to be accomplished. Evil dispositions may remain rooted in our souls at the hour of our death. We should make up for all our negligences, our lack of love, our lack of refinement in dealing with Our Lord. Everything must be paid for.

Purgatory is the only possibility of achieving that purification.

St. Thomas Aquinas says, “The least pain of Purgatory is greater than the greatest pain on earth” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Appendix 1, Question 2).

So Purgatory is worth avoiding. But there is also joy there—joy because we know that heaven comes afterward. The soul in Purgatory has already won the last battle and is awaiting a more or less permanent encounter with God.

Perhaps think and see if you know some friend or relative who perhaps has nobody to pray for them. Think of that soul—the lost souls in Purgatory—offer your Masses for them. We can help them pass more quickly over that great divide that separates them from God by making reparation for our sins.

We know that Our Lady, the Mother of all souls, will look out for them in a special way. She'll take the infinite value of the Masses that we offer for them and help them to yield abundant fruit.

St. Josemaría says, “The holy souls in Purgatory. Out of charity, out of justice, and out of excusable selfishness—they have such power with God!—remember them often in your sacrifices and in your prayers. May you be able to say when you speak of them, ‘My good friends, the souls in Purgatory’” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 571).

Our Blessed Mother, Mary, Refuge of sinners, will obtain for us the grace to act accordingly.

Queen of all souls, pray for us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

CPG