The Communion of Saints
October 29, 2023
Jesus Christ: Lord of lords and King of kings ~
Last Tuesday evening we held our annual one-night mission on the holy angels hosted by a priest of Opus Sanctorum Angelorum (work of the holy angels). People who attended the mission had the opportunity to attend Mass, hear a talk on the angels, witness three people consecrate themselves to their guardian angels, begin a program to consecrate themselves to their guardian angel next year, or if they have done that already, begin a multi-year program to consecrate themselves to all the angels. What a blessing the ministry of Opus Sanctorum Angelorum has been to us. The mission coming so close to All Saints and All Souls days this year, drives home the reality of the Communion of the Saints and our relationship with them.
This Wednesday, November 1st, is All Saints Day and it is a Holy Day of Obligation: we will have Masses at 8:30am, 11am, and 7pm. The following day, Thursday, November 2nd, we commemorate All Souls Day, and while it is not a Holy Day of Obligation, we will have Mass at our regularly scheduled weekday Mass time of 8:30am. These two holy days are the Church’s equivalent of Memorial Day, when we honor the dead with our love, gratitude, and prayers. There is a great spiritual bond between the Communion of Saints: the Church Triumphant (those in Heaven), the Church Suffering (those in Purgatory), and the Church Militant (the Church on earth).
On specific days throughout the year, we honor saints (those people who have gone before us who led heroic lives of holiness) while asking for their prayers from heaven. On those days we might cover about 200 of the saints, but what about the other roughly 9,800 saints that the Church has canonized (formally named)? On November 1st every year we honor all the saints, known and unknown to us; we admire them, strive to emulate them, thank God for them, and invoke their intercession from heaven. Just as we ask people on earth to pray for us, so too we ask the angels and saints of Heaven to pray for us. The saints are literally with God in Heaven, making their help a truly selfless act done for God’s greater glory and our ultimate sanctification. In short, they have immediate access to God and their prayers are holier than ours—what a powerful resource for all of us. Please ask specific saints to intercede for you and others throughout your life—and thank them.
Almost all people who are going to heaven still need to perform penance for their sins. Fortunately for us, God has a plan for that—Purgatory. We know that vice and sin do not exist in heaven, yet they exist in us. Purgatory is the process by which God’s justice is satisfied through our remorse (painful), and we are purified by God and prepared to enter heaven. This process of purgation lasts for various lengths of ‘time’ and intensity depending upon the state of each person’s soul at death. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does a very good job explaining what Purgatory is, as do the websites www.catholicanswers.org and www.newadvent.org.
On November 2nd we commemorate all those people who are in Purgatory with our prayers and penance for their progress toward, and ultimate happiness in, Heaven. The whole month of November is a time when we pray for the dead and offer our Masses for them. Just as we pray for someone on earth when they are in need of help, so too do we pray for those in the state of Purgatory. They can no longer merit anything themselves, so whatever we do for them is of great help: prayer, novenas, fasting, indulgences, etc. Remember, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If we pray and offer sacrifices for the dead in this life, the odds grow exponentially that someone will do the same for us when we die. With the assistance of all the saints, let’s help all those on their way to Heaven with our prayers.
Fr. Thomas Nathe
