November 2, 2025 - All Souls Day
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
On this All Souls Day, we come together to remember all who have died — those still held dearly in our hearts and those who may have no one left to pray for them. In this sacred act of remembrance, the Word of God speaks directly to both our grief and our hope.
Wisdom 3 reminds us: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them.” Even though death may appear to the world as loss or tragedy, God sees a deeper truth. For the faithful, death is not an end but a homecoming — a passage into the peace God has promised. Their hope, tested and refined like gold in fire, is now fulfilled in God’s presence. The Gospel echoes and strengthens this promise. Jesus assures us in John 6: “I will not reject anyone who comes to me… I shall not lose anything of what he has been given, but will raise it on the last day.” This is the solid ground of our Christian faith: God’s love is relentless, protective, and victorious. No one entrusted to Christ slips from His grasp.
Today is a day of tender memory. We honor the lives that helped shape our own — parents, children, friends, neighbors, and generations before us. We may feel the sting of their absence, but even that pain testifies to the love that remains. In prayer, grief is transformed into trust: trust that God’s mercy is wider than our sorrow and deeper than the grave. Let us commend every soul to the Lord with confidence in His promise of eternal life. And may our remembrance inspire us to live now with the faith, compassion, and courage that our loved ones passed on to us — until we are reunited in God’s everlasting light. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.
As we visit and honor the graves and the remains of our beloved dead, let us remember that their souls are very much alive before God — standing now in awe, adoration, and wonder at the beauty of creation and redemption, contemplating the majesty of the Creator and Redeemer. Knowing our human brokenness, we may think of our loved ones as still undergoing purification in purgatory — and that thought may give rise to concern. Yet the Church teaches that purgatory is a merciful place of purification, where every trace of selfishness is cleansed and the soul is illumined by the fullness of God’s love. It prepares the soul to stand before the Lord in complete truth and freedom. Recognizing the vastness of God’s love and the harmony of all relationships in Him, the soul is liberated for the joy of eternal life.
This is why we pray, fast, and offer sacrifices for the faithful departed — to lovingly assist them on their journey into the fullness of God’s presence.
God bless everyone always!!!
Fr. Stan
