NOVEMBER is the month dedicated to the memory of our dear departed: through prayer and a sense of gratitude, we are lead back to those who have meant so much for us. All Soul's Day is a very ancient celebration which goes back to Jewish tradition. It arose a few centuries before the coming of Christ, and the Church has always honoured this recurrence.
As we see the dying leaves gliding to the ground, it is impossible not to remember our parents and grandparents, our relatives and friends who have left us. We understand the enormous debt we owe to those who made our very existence possible, who raised us up, fed us, and helped us in times of trouble. To separate in such a definite way from them means grief and suffering.
Our Faith, however, tells us that our dear departed are still alive; that they are actually more alive now than ever before because they are participating in God's eternal life.
We should therefore not remember them as people we have lost forever, as persons who have nothing more to do with our daily lives and trials, rather we should begin to feel their supportive presence and love; to sense them as presences who care deeply about us and accompany us in good times and bad. The sublime reality of the 'communion of saints' which we recall every time we recite the Apostles' Creed, tells us that there is an intimate connection, a spiritual exchange, between us, who must still pass through that dark door which leads us to God's celestial light, and our dear ones who are already living in that light. From that realm they can intercede for us, and invoke God's mercy on us. We, in our turn, can offer them great assistance by praying for them.
Actually, prayer is love, for when we pray we are sharing our life and love with somebody else. We believe that our love is stronger than death, and so we continue to pray for and with that person who has died until we are together once again in heaven. Our prayers are thus a profession of faith in the afterlife, but even more than that, they are a profession of faith in love.
The flowers we lay down on the tombs of our loved ones are proof of our love and, at the same time, a testimony of our faith. But we can also express our love in other ways. In fact, any sacrifice performed out of love for another is an expression of that love.
In this month, we, the Friars of the Messenger of Saint Anthony, will remain true to our centuries old commitment to Saint Anthony's worldwide family of remembering all the members who passed away by celebrating a special Mass for them at the Basilica on November 2 at 11 in the morning. This year the Mass will be celebrated by the new rector of our Shrine, Fr. Enzo Poiana.
As always, we collect all the prayer intentions and the names of the departed you send us here at the Messenger, and place them in front of the main altar during that Mass.
Our late pope, John Paul II, once urged us to reserve a special place in our hearts to remembering that multitude of departed souls who have no one to morn or remember them, and to invoke God's loving kindness on them. At the Angelus for the Solemnity of All Saints on November 1, 2002, he said, The observance of November 2 asks us to remember, even in a certain sense to prefer, in our prayer the souls of the dead whom no one remembers, to entrust them to the embrace of divine mercy. I am thinking particularly of those who in the last year have left the world. Above all, I pray for the victims of bloody crimes that in the past months and even these days continue to afflict humanity. The commemoration of all the faithful departed can only be a universal prayer for peace: peace for those who have lived, peace for those living and for those who will live.
Things have not changed, so our prayers must embrace the whole of humanity - even those who have no one to offer them a prayer, a flower, a Mass, not even a vanishing memory.
Updated on October 06 2016