“I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.” (Ps 116:9)
Each November, the Church turns her gaze toward those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. After the joy of All Saints on November 1, the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, or All Souls’ Day, invites us to pray for those who have died in Christ but may still be undergoing purification.
The Christian life of hope begins long before the grave. Eternal life starts at Baptism, when we are plunged into the death and Resurrection of Christ (Rom 6:3-4). It is not simply something that follows the death of the body. For this reason, the faithful have long gathered at cemeteries with candles and flowers, signs of the light of Christ and the beauty of life, to express their communion with loved ones who have already gone home to the Father’s house. This is an act of hope, and “hope does not disappoint us” (Rom 5:5). “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thes 4:13).
A Tradition as Old as the Church
Praying for the dead is not a medieval invention. The earliest Christians remembered their departed in the Eucharistic liturgy and kept the anniversaries of their deaths; Tertullian (c. 160-c. 240 AD), writing around the year 200, already speaks of offering the sacrifice for the dead on the anniversary of their passing. The Church’s roots go deeper still: in the Old Testament, Judas Maccabeus took up a collection to offer a sacrifice for the fallen, for “it is a holy and pious thought” to pray for the dead, “that they may be delivered from their sin” (2 Mac 12:44-45).
A dedicated day for all the faithful departed took shape in the monasteries. Around the year 998, St. Odilon, abbot of Cluny, asked the Benedictine houses under his care to offer special prayers and chant the Office of the Dead on November 2, the day after the Solemnity of All Saints. The custom spread from Cluny to the whole Latin Church. In 1915, during the First World War, Pope Benedict XV granted all priests the faculty to celebrate three Masses on this day, so that more of the grieving and the fallen might be remembered at the altar. That privilege remains today.
“I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body”
Every Sunday we profess, “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” The Church’s faith is not in a mere survival of the spirit. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the definitive state of the human person is not one in which the soul is separated from the body; even our mortal bodies will one day live again (CCC 997-1001). Our hope rests on the words of Christ: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live” (Jn 11:25).
St. Paul describes the mystery with great tenderness: “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable… it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). The body, which we know decays, is nonetheless the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). It deserves reverence in life and in death, and we praise God for the gift of every person as he or she was created.
The Eucharist is the pledge of this destiny. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (Jn 6:54). Jesus became man, died on the Cross and rose again so that we might share in the joy of his Resurrection. At death, the soul, which is immortal, meets the particular judgment of God. It awaits its reunion with the body at the Resurrection, when the Lord returns in glory (CCC 1021-1022).
Heaven, Purgatory and the Communion of Saints
Heaven is not first of all a place, but the state of supreme and definitive happiness, the fullness of communion with the Blessed Trinity, the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the saints (CCC 1023-1024). We are being prepared for it even now: everlasting life begins here, in our capacity to love God and our neighbor.
But Scripture teaches that nothing unclean can enter God’s presence (Rev 21:27). The Church therefore professes that those who die in God’s grace and friendship, yet are imperfectly purified, undergo a purification after death so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. This is what the Church calls Purgatory (CCC 1030-1031; cf. 1 Cor 3:13-15). It is not a second chance, nor a place of despair, but the mercy of God completing what love has begun. “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God… they are at peace” (Wis 3:1-3). Here the Communion of Saints becomes concrete. The Church on earth, the Church suffering and the Church triumphant are one Body in Christ. “From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice” (CCC 1032).
Death, then, is not annihilation but the passage to a new way of living. Those who have gone before us are a step ahead on the road. They have turned the corner while we are still on the path, and what awaits us is not the end of all things but the beginning of a new life for which we have long been preparing.
How Can We Help Our Departed?
The Church offers us concrete means to assist the souls in Purgatory:
- The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the most powerful prayer of suffrage. Have Masses offered for your loved ones, and receive Holy Communion for them.
- Prayer, especially the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet and the traditional invocation: “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.”
- Works of mercy, almsgiving and penance offered in their name (cf. Tobit 12:9; CCC 1032).
- Indulgences, the remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven. On November 1-8, a plenary indulgence applicable only to the souls in Purgatory may be gained by visiting a cemetery and praying for the departed, under the usual conditions: Sacramental Confession, Eucharistic Communion, and prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father. On November 2, a similar indulgence is attached to visiting a church or oratory and reciting the Our Father and the Creed (CCC 1471-1479).
At the Cemetery
A cemetery is a field of hope, the Christian koimeterion (κοιμητήριον) from ancient Greek meaning “sleeping place,” where the faithful await the trumpet of the Resurrection. When we visit, let us enter with reverence. We pray; we give thanks to the Lord for the good we received through those we love; we ask pardon for their faults and for our own; and we meditate on our own mortality so that we may be ready when the Lord calls. It is fitting to avoid anything that clouds the sacred character of the place, including the carrying of alcohol, and to leave behind noise and distraction.
Living as If It Were the Last Day
The best way to honor our dead is to pray for them and to live as they would now wish us to live. “Be watchful, for you do not know on which day your Lord will come” (Mt 24:42). Our daily choices are too often dominated by the passing things of this world, wealth, status and power. We lose our way whenever we forget that Jesus came to show us the way to everlasting joy: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). The graves around us whisper the question of the Gospel: “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Matthew 16:26).
We still struggle each day, as those who have gone before us once struggled. We do so in hope, because “he will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain” (Is 25:8; Rev 21:4).
May the Lord give us the grace to live every moment as though it were our last, and so to prepare for our final hope: the coming of Jesus Christ.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
