By Leon Bent-
All Souls’ Day commemorates All Souls, the Holy Souls, or the Faithful Departed; that is, the souls of Christians who have died. Observing Christians typically remember deceased relatives on the day. It is also called a Day of Remembrance or Commemoration of the Faithful Departed. All Souls Day isn’t as old as the Feast of All Saints, but does date back to more than 1000 years. The feast is celebrated to pray for the souls in Purgatory.
All Souls Day is a holy day set aside for honouring the dead. The day is primarily celebrated in the Catholic Church, but it is also celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and a few other denominations of Christianity. The Anglican Church is the largest Protestant church to celebrate the holy day. Most Protestant denominations do not recognize the feast and disagree with the theology behind it.
According to Catholic belief, the soul of a person who dies can go to one of three places. The first is heaven, where a person who dies in a state of perfect grace and communion with God, goes. The second is hell, where those who die in a state of mortal sin, are naturally condemned by their choice. The intermediate option is purgatory, which is thought to be where most people, free of mortal sin, but still in a state of lesser (venial) sin, must go.
In Christianity, All Souls’ Day commemorates ‘All Souls’, ‘the Holy Souls’, or the ‘Faithful Departed’; that is, the souls of Christians who have died. Observing Christians typically remember deceased relatives on the day, and prayer for the departed, visit cemeteries, have special meals together and the like. Requiem Masses are typically celebrated on this day.
“All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are, indeed, assured of eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.” – CCC 1030
An interesting dynamic is that, All Souls’ Day involves asking the saints in heaven to intercede to God, for the dead whose souls might be in Purgatory. Beyond merely these two days, we can pray constantly throughout the year, especially during the month of November.
The truth is that Purgatory is far more complex, rich, mysterious, and plain old weird than the modern mind is comfortable with. Rather than a predictable, straightforward process, numerous people, from saints to sinners, have been given glimpses of the mystical, strange landscape of Purgatory.
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque was visited numerous times by Purgatorial souls of departed religious, who begged her for prayers and assistance in relieving the pain of purification. Far from being a tidy, understandable process, the stories revealed by these ‘ghosts’ show how complex and strange Purgatory is, and how much the prayers of the living are needed. St. Brigid of Sweden was shown a vision of Purgatory, where an angel was comforting the Holy Souls there by constantly repeating: “Blessed is he that, living still upon the earth, gives aid to the souls in Purgatory with their prayers and good deeds, because the justice of God demands that without the help of the living, these would necessarily need to be purified in fire.”
Christ Himself explained the great benefit of praying for the dead to St. Gertrude, after she recited a Psalm for a toad-like Purgatorial ghost she encountered. “Certainly, the souls in Purgatory are lifted up by such supplications,” Christ revealed, “but also brief prayers that are said with fervour are of even greater benefit for them.”
Rather than shy away from contemplating this foreign landscape, of attempting to control it by stripping it of its strange other-worldliness, it would benefit us to spend this year’s All Souls Day learning more about what God has allowed the saints to see of Purgatory, and let our hearts soften towards our brothers and sisters residing there. Someday, it may be us, clinging to the prayers of those to come.
All Souls’ Day is marked on 2nd November directly following All Saints’ Day, and is an opportunity for Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholic churches to commemorate the faithful departed. They remember and pray for the souls of people who are in Purgatory – the place (or state) in which those who have died atone for their less grave sins before being granted the vision of God in Heaven called the Beatific vision.
What does it mean to pray for the Poor Souls? It means everything that we can offer for the faithful departed.
• We can offer our bodily pains in expiation for their sins.
• We can offer our spiritual sufferings, our disappointments and fears, our discouragement and estrangement from those we love.
• We can offer our vocal prayers, like the Rosary, the Memorare, the Angelus, the recitation of the Divine Office.
• We can offer our mental prayers, like the Way of the Cross, our daily meditation and examination of conscience.
• We can offer our mortifications, like giving up some delicacy at table, or performance of some unpleasant work.
As to the duration, place, and exact nature of this purification, the Church has no official teaching or dogma, although Saint Augustine and others used fire as a way to explain the nature of the purification.
Many faithful Catholics, including Pope Benedict XVI, understand that Purgatory may be best thought of as an “existential state”, as opposed to a temporal place. See Benedict’s Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, pp.230-231.
The feast of All Souls comes on the day after All Saints. In between these two feast days, we remember all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ: the Church Triumphant in heaven, the Church Militant on earth, and the Church Suffering in purgatory.
Leon Bent is an ex-Seminarian and studied the Liberal Arts and Humanities, and Philosophy, from St. Pius X College, Mumbai. He holds Masters Degree in English Literature and Aesthetics. He has published three Books and have 20 on the anvil. He has two extensively “Researched” Volumes to his name: Hail Full of Grace and Matrimony: The Thousand Faces of Love. He won The Examiner, Silver Pen Award, 2000 for writing on Social Issues, the clincher being a Researched Article on Gypsies in India, published in an issue of the (worldwide circulation) Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection, New Delhi. On April, 28, 2018, Leon received the Cardinal Ivan Dias Award for a research paper in Mariology.