Christmas 2025

In the creed we always refer to the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, became Man.  And that’s what we are celebrating today.  We refer to this mystery as the “incarnation”, which is latin for “taking on flesh”.  And of course for us Christians that’s the key moment at which our salvation began.  Jesus, the son of God, took on flesh, was born, grew up, preached and worked miracles, suffered and died, and rose again from the dead to return to the heaven from which he came.  But why?  Why did God choose this way to save us?

He didn’t have to.  There was no obligation of God’s part to save us.  But also, he didn’t have to do it this way.  God could have saved us in any number of ways, most less painful and maybe more effective than the way he chose.  What if the incarnation had never happened?

Some of us remember the story of Robinson Crusoe.  There is a scene after the shipwreck when Crusoe finds that many things have been washed up on the beach.  Somehow they all contribute to his ability to survive on the desert island.  Why did these things wash up and many other things didn’t?  In the story this fact just moves the plot along, but it might lead us to the question, why me?  Why did God call me out of nothingness, and not someone else? In a sense each of us has been saved from a wreck.  We don’t have to be, and we don’t have to be what we are.  God’s dealing with us is generous beyond imagining.  Whatever else happens in our lives -- pain, old age, suffering; but joy, loving relationships, children, good food --whatever happens beats not existing at all.  So why did God make you, make me?  One theologian said that the reason was that God thought we might like it; he loved us before we began in our mother’s womb.

Not to digress, but think about the miracle of Cana.  Jesus took water and made it into wine.  Pretty spectacular, right?  But put it against the background of how ordinary wine is made.  Water is taken up by the grape plant and using energy from the sun, and the labor of human beings, it becomes wine.  Jesus, being God, was not doing something unnatural, but something that reflected  the essence of a natural process.  

You may know someone who has had amazing spiritual experiences; I do.  I’ve heard of people who have spoken in tongues, been slain in the spirit, witnessed the expulsion of demons.  You may have heard of someone who was almost miraculously converted; some overwhelming experience changed a life forever.  I’ve known people like that as well, people who almost overnight went from indifference to an overwhelming desire to be a saint.  But just between you and me, I’ve been an average Catholic all my life, never doubting that I was in the right faith, always aware that I do not live up to the standards of the saints.  No sudden conversion, no miraculous happenings.

The incarnation is something like the miracle of Cana.  It’s not a one-off spectacular miracle; it’s a teaching for each of us from God.  God gives his Son, gives himself, really, as a total gift to us because he thinks we might like it.  He shows us his plan through the life of Jesus -- who lives our life, who is like us in everything but sin; who dies, and who is rescued from death and seated in heaven --that’s the gift God offers to us.  And we’ve done nothing for the gift of existing, and nothing for the gift of salvation.  As scripture tells us every good and perfect gift comes from God.  

We live our lives as though we are the center of the universe.  That’s just a fact, not good, not bad.  What do we do in response to God’s gift?  All we can do is give him our hearts.  That’s what love is all about.  Giving God our heart means that we try to put him in the center, which means we try to make room there so God can occupy it.  And you and I can do this no matter what we might have experienced or failed to experience, because incarnation happened and it happens even now as God enters our lives and we are born again, and he gradually or suddenly takes on our flesh, our body, our soul.  

The only thing that is ours, the only thing we can bring to God, is our sin, our false self.  And that’s all he wants.  And we go to him and say “lord, I feel bad about myself, but I’m yours.  Lord, I’m not proud of what I did, but I’m yours.  Lord, I’m sorry for failing you again, but I’m yours.”  And the incarnation reminds us that God has given us the greatest gift he can give -- himself.  And all he wants from us, no matter how sinful, how imperfect, how damaged we may be, is our heart, the center where we live.  He says "move aside, and let me be the center of your universe.  That’s why I called you into being.  That’s why I gave you my whole self.  All I want is your heart.  .

As you leave Church today, pause in front of the manger, look at the baby, and say, “Lord, I’m far from the gift I wish I could give you, but I’m yours; take my heart.”    

Fourth Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 1:18-24

If you read the old testament, or are a student of history, the overwhelming picture you get of marriage is that there is a hierarchy -- the man is the center, the woman is concerned to please the man, and the children are expected to honor the mother but even more, to submit themselves to the father’s will.  Male children were expected to follow the father’s trade, or take over the family farm.  Female children were often pawns in the father’s efforts to better himself; arranged marriages benefited the father.   One of the things about Joseph is that he introduces a new way to be a father; he is not the dominating lord of the family,  but is the servant leader instead.

  In the days of Joseph and Mary, when a young woman reached the age of 15 or so, her father would seek a husband for her.  A decent father would be thinking about his daughter’s welfare, but also about what a young man could bring to the family.  And in truth the young woman had very little to say about who her father chose for her.  The Jews were more enlightened than the surrounding societies; Jewish girls could say “no” to an arranged marriage, but it wasn’t a good idea if you wanted to stay in your dad’s good graces.

Once your future husband was selected, there was an elaborate ceremony of betrothal.  And after this, the young woman was considered married, although she still lived with her parents and had no relations with her husband.  That had to wait about a year or so, when the husband would have built a home and established himself in a trade.  When this happened he would notify his bride that he was coming to pick her up and move into her new home, and a great party would be held.  Jesus describes this in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. 

Joseph and Mary were betrothed but had not lived together.  And when Mary is found to be with child, Joseph decides to divorce her quietly.  Can you imagine his heartbreak?  Saint Augustine said that Joseph decided to divorce Mary because as a good Jew he would offend God by taking an adulterous woman as a wife.  Joseph loved Mary, but loved God more.  Saint Jerome says that Joseph learned from Mary that her pregnancy was an act of God; his impulse was  to get out of the way -- much as he loved Mary, if God wanted her, he did not want to interfere.  Joseph was willing to give up Mary because he loved God more.  

And something new happened.  Joseph took Mary to be his wife because he was told to do so by an angel.  And we can almost feel the relationship that Matthew describes.  Joseph takes Mary into his home despite the stares and snide remarks of the townspeople - either Joe could not control himself, or Joe is marrying a defiled woman.  Joseph gets another dream, and immediately takes his new family to Egypt for a couple of years.  When they return because of still another dream, Joseph settles down to a life of manual labor, taking care of his wife and foster son, fading into the background until his death, sometime before Jesus goes out on his public ministry, 

Joseph is a descendant of King David.  He is told to give Jesus his name, linking Jesus to the lineage of David.  Other than that, Joseph never sees his son perform a miracle (the first miracle, according to scripture, was at the wedding feast of Cana).  He never hears his son preach to the multitudes.  As Joseph takes care of his family, teaches his son his trade, practices his Jewish religion faithfully, he is given no glimpse of what is to come.  His faithfulness and devotion are there, however, as they were before he received the first command of God in a dream.  

And that’s interesting.  I’ve had dreams.  You also.  But have you ever done something because of a dream?  We see in the Old Testament that God sometimes communicated with people through dreams.  The other Joseph, the one who became the right hand man of the ruler of Egypt; Samuel the Prophet, and a few others.  But in the New Testament Joseph is the only one God speaks to in dreams.  And I wonder if Joseph was like you and I and wondered if the dream was really from God.  No flashing lights, miracles, explosions -- just having a dream and deciding it was from God and doing what you were told.  

.  If there is any patron of an ordinary blessed life, Joseph is the patron.  A man who spent his life trying to be righteous, trying always to put God first, and ready always to instantly obey when called upon by God,  even to giving up his bride, even to taking his wife and son to live in a foreign country, even to get up every morning and do the same thing he did yesterday and would do tomorrow.  Joseph, the patron saint of an ordinary life.  

Third Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 11:2-15

You would think that John the Baptist, having been raised by a father who had met an angel and a mother who the spirit had revealed that her nephew would be the promised Son of God, would have no doubt about the identity of his cousin Jesus.  You would think that John, had there been any doubt left, would have had no questions left when he baptized Jesus and heard the words “This is my beloved son, listen to him”.  And yet, here we find John sending some disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one we expect, or shall we look for another?”  It’s a human thing.  We can be faced with miracles and never give our hearts to God.  I have a friend who had a silver medal turn into a gold medal as she visited a holy place.  Her conversion was amazing -- from an indifferent Catholic, she began attending daily mass, studying her faith, indeed, sharing her faith boldly.  But after a few years, she was back to being indifferent -- in fact, she more or less abandoned her faith entirely.  No miracle can change us if we don’t want it to do so.  It’s true of you and I, it’s true of John the Baptist.

Jesus doesn’t say, “I’m the one.”  He says, look at what is happening! And he quotes the prophet Isaiah, who talked about how those days of the Messiah would be.  And Jesus has been traveling through Galilee, leaving behind a trail of remarkable events, healings, even raising the dead; collecting large crowds of the poor and outcasts, and telling them the good news -- God had not forgotten them.    

If you are like me, and many of you are, I’m sure, your faith gets a little shaky sometimes.  When things are going well, it’s not hard to believe that God exists, that he loves you.  When things start to go poorly, sometimes it’s easy to believe there is no God.  We all have a tendency to say “Why me, God?”  I think John the Baptist felt that way, and that prompted his doubt. And Jesus is saying to John and to you and I, look around, there are miracles everywhere, if only you have eyes to see.  I heard a sermon not long ago in which the miracle of Cana was discussed.  Water into wine, spectacular, right?  But it happens all the time, water falls from the sky and nourishes a grape vine; grapes grow, juice is extracted and fermented and there is wine.  A friend of mine lost his job, applied everywhere, nothing was happening, then out of the blue someone who needed his skills called him up and all of a sudden he had a much better job than previously.  Look for miracles.  We can choose to believe that God is behind everything that happens -- and that’s a miracle -- or we can just believe in odd coincidences or natural processes and leave God out of the picture.  Our ancestors in faith, including Jesus, saw the hand of God in everything.  We recently celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe -- her appearance to Juan Diego led to the conversion of 8 million souls in a matter of a few years.  A miracle!

Jesus then turns his attention to John the Baptist.  Who did you go out to see? He reminds the crowd that they had gone out to the desert to see a prophet, and the saw one -- the one who was predicted by the scriptures, again from Isaiah -- the messenger who would be the last and greatest of the prophets, but who would pale in comparison to the least one in the kingdom of heaven.  That’s a hard statement to reconcile.  But I think the hint is in the words of Jesus -- John is the greatest of those born of a woman.  John lived and died before Jesus suffered, died and rose from the dead, and established his church.  Jesus tells us in John’s gospel that “unless you are born again of water and spirit, you cannot enter into the kingdom of God.  You and I have been born again of water and spirit in our baptism.  We are in the kingdom, we start out capable of more on the spiritual level than John was.  Using God’s grace given to us in that sacrament, we have the potential to be saints.  Jesus said that through water we are born again -- our births into the human race are accompanied by water, and the same is true -- our bodies are born again through water.  Our spirits are infused by God at conception; and when we are born again in Baptism, those spirits, our souls, are brought into a new relationship with God.  And we are given entry into the kingdom as a free gift.  And if we never reject God’s gift our salvation is assured,  Does that mean John isn’t in heaven?  No.  But you and I, unlike John, are already in the kingdom of heaven.

So let us look at the world around us and see the hand of God in everything that happens, and rejoice because we share the kingdom of the one who is to come, the Christ. 

First Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 24:36 - 44

This is the first Sunday of Advent, as you can tell by our purple vestments.  Advent is a word related to coming, and we all know that it means the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, which we will celebrate in four weeks and four days from now.  When I was a little kid, this was the time I suddenly became aware of the fact that Christmas was not far off in the indefinite future, but that it was inevitable, and I could only suffer the long wait until Christmas morning.  For us, Advent was a lot like lent; we gave something up, prayed more, got ready.  For me it seemed that it should be the other way around -- 6 weeks for Christmas, four for Easter.  To my childish mind which lasted until I was through college, Christmas beat Easter as the most important of the special days of the year.

So we celebrate the coming of Jesus into the world.  That moment described in the gospel of Luke, when Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and Jesus was conceived, the world changed completely.  God became flesh to give us the clearest possible picture of how he wants us to live our lives, including that part of life that all of us must go through, our deaths.  One of the best ways to prepare for Christmas, then, is to examine the life of Christ.  This is the year we will read through the gospel of Matthew, and it would be a wonderful thing to spend a few minutes each day reading that gospel and thinking about it.  After all, it is inspired; as someone put it, the scriptures are the love letter God gives the human race.  Read the gospel.

But we also celebrate Jesus coming into the world right now.  Between his first coming, as a flesh and blood Jewish preacher and healer in the first century, he does not disappear but comes into the world over and over again.  Whenever the word of God is preached it is Jesus preaching.  Whenever the assembly that is the Church comes together in prayer, word or action, Jesus is there in his body, the Church, because wherever two or three are gathered in his name, there he is.  And whenever our priest calls upon the Holy Spirit to change the bread and wine into his body and blood, there he is.  Jesus did not leave us with his ascension into heaven; he remains with us throughout history, every day of our lives.  And he is always with us, even to the end of the world, as he promised.  

And finally, we celebrate Jesus' return, which we call the second coming.  As I mentioned this is not an accurate description, as he comes to us over and over again.  Perhaps a better term would be “the last coming”.  Because we are promised throughout scripture that a day will come when he returns in visible, obvious and unmistakable triumph to rule over a new heaven and a new earth.  That’s a promise.  But if we truly believe that what should our response be?  Some people say that his return with a new creation means that this present creation doesn’t matter very much.  If as in the days of Noah some of us will be whisked away and others left behind, all that we do comes to nothing in the end.  But Jesus’ last coming isn’t something that will be imposed on us.  It is his constant presence in the word, the assembly and the Eucharist that will ultimately create the condition such that earth will become like heaven -- “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.  

The first theme of today’s readings has to do with the anticipation of the comings of our Lord and savior -- God entering human history, God shaping human history through his people, and God ultimately reigning over our transformed world, transformed by you and I and everyone who belongs to Christ.  

The second theme is that we must be alert, we must be awake, we must take up our crosses and follow him.  We each have a part in bringing about the kingdom of heaven.  A small part? Maybe, but an essential part.  God could choose not to use us, but his desire is to work through us.  And that’s what we need to remember as we enter a new church year on this first Sunday of advent.  Let us resolve to wake up each morning and look forward to that day’s opportunities.  Saint Jose Maria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, told us that humans are given the task of working, and in work we make ourselves holy, we make the work holy, and we make the world holy through our work.  And in doing so we hasten the coming of God’s kingdom into our world, we summon the last coming of Our Lord.

Feast of Christ the King, cycle C

Luke 23:35-43

This is the last Sunday in the liturgical year C, and as always, we celebrate Christ the King.  Of course we Americans have never had a king, and even modern countries that have kings don’t really know what it means to have a king.  The first reading has to do with the establishment of David’s kingship over Israel.  I’m sure it’s an account that was approved by a later king, probably not too close to the reality.  David was a typical king for those days -- he had an army and he used it; he kept his generals in line by giving them power and riches, and punishing them when they got out of line; and when he thought about the common people at all, it was to figure out how to extract more wealth from them.  Throw in one more thing -- kings wanted blood relatives - children or brothers or sisters -- to sit on the throne after they were gone.  It was an attempt to be immortal.  Although they don’t call him a king, Kim Jong Un of North Korea is probably the ruler most like a king these days.  He is the third “Kim” to rule that poor country with an iron fist.  His grandfather, Kim Il Sung was once asked why he was bent on developing a nuclear arsenal.  Was he not worried about starting a war that would end the human race?  His reply was that if he or his descendants weren’t around, there was no reason to worry about the rest of the world.  This feast, by the way, was promulgated only 100 years ago -- maybe to remind the world that there is only one king.  

Kings of the world have no problem sending their subjects to die for them.  We have a king who chose to die for us.  The second reading reminds us of our privileged position with respect to the rest of the human race; our king gives us direct access to God because he is true God and true man; he gives us a clear example of how to lead a truly human life; and he promises us perpetual citizenship in the world to come if we remain faithful.  

If you think about the image of a naked suffering Jesus dying on the cross, he doesn’t seem to be a king.  Pilate had put the plaque over his head to insult the Jews, not to recognize Jesus' kingship.  That’s why the leaders of the Jews wanted him to write “He said he was King of the Jews”.  But Pilate left the insult stand, when he told them “What I have written, I have written”.  And Jesus is insulted by the crowd, by the soldiers, and by the other criminal, all of whom insist that if Jesus has some sort of special relationship with God, he could easily come down from the cross; his failure to do so proved that he was just another rabble rouser.

The other criminal, and this is important, begins by acknowledging his fear of God.  He moves on to admit his sinful nature -- we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes.  He recognizes that Jesus is innocent, and then he throws himself on Jesus’ mercy, recognizing that Jesus is more than he seems.  And Jesus then exercises his kingship; he forgives the thief and promises him heaven.  And in the last moments of his life, I’m sure he went from despair to blessed hope.  That’s how I want to die.

So Jesus is king, the king of the Kingdom of God.  What is this kingdom?  Father Gerald Derring put it this way.  First, the kingdom is a space.  It exists in every home where parents and children love each other; in every country that cares for the weak and vulnerable; in every person or collection of persons who reach out to the needy.  Second, it is a time.  It happens when someone feeds a hungry person, shelters a homeless person, shows care to someone neglected, helps overturn an unjust law or avert a war or work to ease poverty or ignorance.  It is in the past, when Jesus walked the earth; it’s in the present when the church and indeed many others work to create a world of goodness and justice; and it's in the future when what is on earth resembles what is in heaven.  Finally it is a condition, where love, justice and peace conquer the world once and for all.  

When we were baptized we became citizens of the kingdom.  On this feast of Christ the King, we should review our commitment to the kingdom we promised to serve.  Because we belong to his kingdom to the extent that we allow Jesus to be in charge of our lives.  We should pray each day that Jesus gives us the right words to say, the right way to conduct ourselves.  Jesus said that he came to serve and not to be served.  IF we imitate him we will reign with him.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church says “For the Christian, to reign is to serve him, particularly when serving the poor and the suffering in whom the Church recognizes the image of her poor and suffering founder.  

We’ve probably all seen the bumper sticker that says “God is my co-pilot”.  There’s another one that says “If Jesus is your co-pilot, change seats.”  The life of a Christian, the life of someone who belongs to the kingdom, is always one in which we struggle to submit our will to that of the King.  May we remember this today on his feast day.  

Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

 Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

John 2:13-22

Last Sunday and this Sunday we have unusual situations in the Church calendar.  Both are feast days which, if celebrated on weekdays, are not Holy Days of Obligation, but when they land on Sundays, they outrank the readings for that Sunday.  Last week was the feast of All Souls ‘’ we can kind of understand why this would outrank the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary time -- after all we are celebrating all those who have been or will be received into God’s heaven -- including, we hope, ourselves.  But the feast of the Lateran Basilica of Saint John?  Why does that outrank the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary time?  Historically the Lateran Basilica was dedicated in the years 324 A.D, after Constantine stopped the persecution of Christians.  In a way it marks the emergence of Christianity  from an underground movement to one which would eventually reach the whole world.  Also, it is the Cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, the pope, and as such celebrates the unity of all local churches with the church of Rome.  

For Sundays and major feasts the Church selects three readings from scripture, usually one from the Old Testament, one from the New, usually from a letter of Paul, and one from the gospels.  Often the texts are related, but  the three texts here seem to be related to each other since they all contain the word “temple”.   But in a way, that’s worth looking at in itself. 

Ezekiel is a prophet who probably was born in Jerusalem but spent the rest of his life in Babylon..  His book in the bible is a series of prophetic actions and visions, the themes of which include the promise of God to restore the Israelites to their land and kingdom.  A  famous passage is when God shows Ezekiel a field of bones which get covered with flesh and then made to live again -- probably an inspiration for movies about zombies, but more seriously a prediction that Israel, swallowed up by Babylon, would eventually be restored.  Today’s reading looks forward to that time of restoration, when the restored temple will bring about the fulfillment of God’s promises and the source of life-giving water, which will bring about abundant food and healing medicine.  In a similar way our Catholic churches are sources of life-giving food and drink, the body and blood of Jesus.  In our churches we gather around this sacred feast and through it become one with Catholics all over the world.  

The gospel describes a scene in Jesus’ life when he appears to become angry and violent.  John describes this as happening early in his public ministry, whereas in the other three gospels it happens in Jesus’ last weeks on earth.  If it really occurred late in his ministry, and he didn’t do it twice, which some literalist scholars believe, then it may not be that he was angry, but that he was performing a prophetic sign, like Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and the other prophets often did.  If you remember, Hosea at God’s command married a prostitute to symbolize not only God’s love for his people, but his persistence in loving them despite their sins.  Jesus is showing his concern for what is sacred.  I know when I was very young we had a sense of the sacred when we would enter the church; very little talking and what had to be said was said in whispers; genuflecting when passing the tabernacle,  signing ourselves with blessed water when entering the church which recalled our baptism that made us part of God’s family -- we’ve probably lost a lot of that sense of the sacred, unfortunately.

Perhaps the reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans carries a third important message, and one which has immediate application.  Paul writes, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and God’s spirit dwells within you?”  How often do we reflect on the fact our bodies are sacred? In a world where  we are told that we can do whatever we want with our bodies or the bodies of others, as long as we can get away with it; where the politics of assassination is condoned by some of our fellow citizens; where unborn human beings can be destroyed and their organs sold for medical experiments; where every two or three years we have to fend off another attempt to make assisted suicide legal in this state.  But our bodies are sacred, they are temples of the Holy Spirit, individually and collectively -- because since we are one through the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit in each of us is in all of us.  

Francis of Assisi, Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, and many, many of the saints lived their whole lives in recognition of this fact, and saw the service given to even the most destitute of human beings as service to Jesus himself.  

To me, the readings of the Feast of the Dedication of the church of the bishop of Rome calls to mind that we live in a sacred world in which God is building up his kingdom, a kingdom in which the ultimate temple will be the dwelling place of God who will give his people his own divine life.  So may this be a feast of hope for all of us. 

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.