The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed
Thursday, November 2, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/110223.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, the whole Church joins in praying for the wholeness of the Communion of Saints. We all desire to be together again, with everyone we have loved, in eternal life.

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This morning, as I prepare the reflection for All Souls Day, I consider how much religious practice can change in one’s lifetime. The Church and we are always growing in understanding and truth if we have open hearts. This graced understanding is exactly what the Church seeks in the current Synod on Synodality. Yet, as with all growth, we may tend to resist.

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Today, I am taken (waaay) back to how All Souls Day was commemorated in my youth. My teachers impressed me with the idea that this special day was a time when repentant souls could be released from Purgatory if I prayed hard enough. I thought the process was similar to Amazon Prime Day where costs/penalties dropped and the early and persistent pray-er could snag a lot of souls for heaven.

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(not us, but close enough)

We always had off from school on All Souls Day, so Janie McFadden and I would meet up about 5:45 AM to begin our marathon of Masses.  We had four parish priests so at three Masses a piece, Janie and I were set for the next few hours of liberating prayer. About 7:00 AM, Harry diNicolo finally showed up but he certainly didn’t get full credit like me and Janie!

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The scene was somber.  The priests wore black vestments then, spoke mostly in Latin, and turned their backs to the participating congregation. There were a lot of candles and not very much real light that early in the morning. You guessed it – Janie and I took turns falling asleep. About every 10 minutes, one would punch the other in an effort to rev up purgatorial releases. Still not sure if any of that worked. Harry, by the way, went back home about 7:15 because he was hungry for breakfast.

One year, after the third Nicene Creed or so, Janie fainted. Sister Eucharistica told her not to do the All Souls Marathon again without drinking “a wee bit of milk before you come to Church”. Given our understanding of Divine Law at the time, requiring total fasting, we fourth graders were pretty sure Sr. Eucharistica would be the next soul we were praying out of Purgatory!

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But as I think of her now, she was exactly the kind of person we need today for a “synodal Church”. She was a woman full of wisdom, courage, and common sense. She knew how to prioritize human needs long before the institutional Church figured it out. She knew Jesus desired communion with someone who wasn’t in a dead faint!

I think she probably knew too that we hadn’t come to Mass on that cold 1955 morning just to help “release” folks from purgatory.  We had come to remember people we loved who had gone ahead of us, to reflect on their lives, to miss them, love them, and to learn from both their lights and their shadows. 

We were young kids who, in our own small way, wanted to honor and face the meaning of death in human life. We wanted to know that God cared about our sadness over losing Grandmom or Uncle Joe. We wanted to know that God cared about us even though we too would face the same mysterious completion of our earthly lives.

Unfortunately, the Tridentine Mass didn’t provide much of that spiritual enrichment. But Sr. Eucharistica did. God bless her!

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Today, in a language still very heavy with 16th-century concepts, the Catholic Encyclopedia defines purgatory as a place or condition of temporal punishment for those who, departing this life in God’s grace, are, not entirely free from venial faults, or have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their transgressions.

That language doesn’t do much for me either. I choose to think that most of us do the best we can with our lifetimes, but maybe there are a few who don’t. They don’t quite create the space in themselves to receive and eternally embrace God.  “Purgatory” is their second chance, a “time out” God gives them to get their heads together and realize how much they have been missing. Then, violà, they like all the saints are flooded with glory.

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My dear friend Janie has long ago gone to the heavenly understanding.  I’m not sure what happened to Harry, even though we dated off and on well into high school.  I think he finally found somebody who liked to eat more than she liked to go to Mass. Meanwhile, my likes were going in a different direction.

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Prose: from Pope Francis’s homily on November 2, 2022

Brother and sisters, let us feed our expectation for Heaven, let us exercise the desire for paradise. Today it does us good to ask ourselves if our desires have anything to do with Heaven. Because we risk continuously aspiring to passing things, of confusing desires with needs, of putting expectations of the world before expectation of God. But losing sight of what matters to follow the wind would be the greatest mistake in life.

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Remembering Our Merion Mercy Family – lyrics below

We lovingly remember these dear Sisters and Associates who shared Mercy life with us and who have gone home to God in 2023.

One day in the love of Christ
we’ll meet once again
We’ll laugh as we celebrate a life with no end
Where death has been overcome by our Risen Lord

And there are no more goodbyes,
no more tears, no more loneliness,
and no more fear

Our pain turns to joy
darkness to light
in God’s heaven
there are no more goodbyes

No words tell the gratitude
we have for the gift
your life was to each of us
We’ll never forget

May angels now
lead you home
to our Risen Lord

And there are no more goodbyes,
no more tears, no more loneliness,
and no more fear

Our pain turns to joy
darkness to light, in God’s heaven
there are no more goodbyes

Though now with our heavy hearts
we go separate ways
we trust in the certain hope
there will come a day
we’ll join you in paradise
with our risen Lord

There will be no more goodbyes,
no more tears, no more loneliness,
and no more fear
Our pain turns to joy
darkness to light God’s heaven
there are no more goodbyes