Thought for the Day  

All Saints and All Souls

The writer George Eliot once stated that ‘Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.’ We may not need a particular day or month to bring our deceased loved ones to mind and yet praying for the dead during November is more than just remembering, it is an act of love and faith. The Church sets aside this month, beginning with All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, to remember all the faithful departed, a practice rooted in the belief in the Communion of Saints, the spiritual union of all believers, on earth, in purgatory, and in Heaven.

Praying for the dead is also for Catholics a spiritual work of mercy as well as an act of love offered for them. It acknowledges our belief in Purgatory, a state of final purification for those who die in God’s grace but are not yet perfectly cleansed. Our presence and our prayers, especially at Mass, assist souls on this journey towards the ultimate Christian vision of seeing God face to face where there is complete happiness and lasting peace. Inevitably too our prayer for the dead is also a reminder of our own mortality. As we pray for those gone before us, we are humbled and sometimes haunted by the realisation that our time on earth is short and to examine our priorities. The Beatles put it well many years ago ‘Life is very short and there’s no time for fussing and fighting my friends’.

Last December Pope Leo encouraged Christians to reflect upon the reality of death because above all he reminded those listening, ‘it teaches us to choose what we really want to make of our existence.’ So this November, let us embrace this life affirming tradition, offering our prayers as a gift of love to all of our brothers and sisters awaiting the fullness of God’s presence.                                                                                                 Fr. Paul Clayton-Lea

Photo by Kevin Woblick on Unsplash

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