All Souls Day 2025

 All Souls Day, 2025

John 6:37-40

When I was in fourth grade one of my classmates was a son of the then governor of Montana.  I never got to know him too well; we lived in different friendship circles.  About Christmas time he stopped coming to school and rumor had it that he was ill.  In April all the guys in my class received an invitation to his birthday with the order to dress up in girl’s clothing.  So we all did, feeling like fools.  If it had been today, of course, we’d make the front page of the newspaper and be praised for bravely coming out.  As we shyly gathered in the living room, my classmate was brought out in a wheelchair -- dressed in a pinafore, as per requirement.  He was shaved bald and had a big scar on his scalp.  Though he was smiling he clearly could not speak.  It wasn't a very fun party and a month later we were all attending his funeral -- he had had a brain tumor and, in the attempt, to remove it had lost his ability to walk and to speak.  This was the first time in my life that I sensed my own mortality, the first time that death drew close to me.  

Nowadays it seems that every funeral we attend leaves the impression that the dearly departed is now in heaven with Jesus.  Not so when I was a child.  In those days the priest wore a black chasuble, and the choir chanted the ancient sequence in Latin, the Dies Irae.  Some lines in English were “Day of wrath, that day will dissolve the world in ashes…. How great will be the quaking when the Judge is about to come … Earth and nature will marvel when the creature will rise again to respond to the judge ..”Just judge of vengeance, make a gift of remission before the day of reckoning.”  And it goes on like that. In the end it goes “Tearful that day on which from glowing embers will arise the guilty man who is to be judged -- then spare him O God, merciful Lord Jesus grant him rest.”  It was a good thing it was all in Latin because the translation is pretty scary.  In those days we knew that most of us had some purgatory ahead of us, including my fourth-grade classmate.  

All Souls Day remembers the faithful who have passed into the next life.  Most non-Catholic Christians don’t believe in purgatory.  We Catholics and Orthodox Christians do, and the belief in purification after death has Jewish roots.  In the Second Book of Maccabees Judas Maccabeus offers sacrifice explicitly that the dead soldiers would be delivered from their sin.”  We Catholics believe that redemption is a process; The price of our redemption was paid in full by Jesus on the cross, but we need to cooperate completely with his grace, and who does that?  And Pope Saint Gregory the Great said, “It is certain that the souls in purgatory are saved … through the prayers of the living.” Although they can pray for us, they cannot pray for themselves, because our eternal fate is governed by our lives on earth.  

My mother was a very religious woman but had a fierce temper which would emerge periodically.   My dad was religious, but now and then would drink more than he should.  We all die with flaws, with souls that need purification if they are to enter into the beatific vision of heaven.  That isn’t God’s requirement, it’s God’s mercy.  We imagine purgatory as a place of purifying fire, but none of us know what will go on except that we will have to let go of everything we loved on earth so that we can love God completely.  And that is going to be painful.

Back in the olden days All Souls Day called forth special prayers for the dead.  The church taught then and never changed the teaching, that on that day you could gain a plenary indulgence for a soul in purgatory.  This requires that you make a good confession within twenty days of seeking the indulgence, that you have received Holy Communion, prayed for the Pope's intentions, and that you are completely detached from sin, even venial sin (that's the hard one), and that you perform the indulgences work.  On All Souls’ Day the work is to visit a church and pray the Our Father and the Apostles Creed.  You can do this more than once.  During the Octave of All Saints Day, November 1 through 8, you can in addition gain a plenary indulgence once a day by visiting a cemetery and praying for the dead -- again, with the other conditions met.  If you can’t be completely detached from sin, a partial indulgence is granted.  This is what our Church teaches, even though it sounds strange to our ears in the year 2025.

What does an indulgence do? It lessens (if partial) or eliminates (in plenary) the purification of the soul for whom it is intended.  No one knows how, but the Church which has been given the power to bind on earth what will be bound in heaven, has proclaimed this and continues to teach it. Long ago I prayed for my classmate on All Souls Day.  I hope he’s praying for me now. .  

Will you pray for a soul in purgatory this week?  Do you know of anyone who died who was not completely holy?  If your prayers release a soul from purgatory, think of how grateful that person will be -- and you have another friend in heaven praying for you.