Homily for All Souls’ Day 2013.
Yesterday, on
All Saints’ Day, we reflected that we are never alone. I told you what Pope
Benedict XVI said at his installation of Bishop of Rome in April 2005: “Those
who believe are never alone B neither in life nor in death.@ God never intended us to be Lone
Rangers, I said. In baptism he made us members of his great family, the
Catholic Church. He wants us to support
one another. One way we do so is by praying for one another.
Our present
Pope Francis is quite different from his predecessor. Yet he proclaims the same
gospel. Here is something he said only last Wednesday. “The communion of Saints goes beyond earthly life, it goes beyond death
and lasts forever. This union among us, goes beyond and continues in the afterlife;
it is a spiritual union that stems from Baptism is not severed by death but,
thanks to the Resurrection of Christ, is destined to find its fullness in
eternal life. There is a profound and indissoluble bond among all those who are
still pilgrims in this world - among us - and those who have crossed the
threshold of death to enter into eternity. All the baptized down here on earth,
the souls in Purgatory and all the Blessed who are already in Paradise
make up one great family. This communion between earth and Heaven is brought
about especially through intercessory prayer.”
Intercessory
prayer (also called suffrages) refers to our prayer for the departed, and to their prayer for us. He is what
the Catechism says. “The Church in its pilgrim members [that is in us who are
still alive], from the very earliest days of the Christian religion, has
honored with great respect the memory of the dead and ‘because it is a holy and
a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their
sins’ she offers her suffrages for them. Our prayer for them is capable not
only of helping them but also of making their intercession for us effective.” (No.
958)
This
is what we do in a special way on All Souls’ Day.
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