All Souls: Praying for Souls in Purgatory

Tuesday 2 November 2010

IN COMMEMORATIONE OMNIUM FIDELIUM DEFUNCTORUM
Commemoration of All Souls
1st Class, Black

Oremus.

Fidélium, Deus, ómnium cónditor et redémptor, animábus famulórum famularúmque tuárum remissiónem cunctórum tríbue peccatórum : ut indulgéntiam, quam semper optavérunt, piis supplicatiónibus consequántur : Qui vivis et regnas cum Deo Patre in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sæcula sæculórum.

R. Amen.

Let us pray.

O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all them that believe : grant unto the souls of thy servants and handmaidens the remission of all their sins ; that as they have ever desired thy merciful pardon, so by the supplications of their brethren they may receive the same. Who livest and reignest with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end.

R. Amen.

This day all priests may celebrate three Masses. If a priest says only one Mass, it is to be the first of those given in the missal for this day. If he sings one Mass, it is to be the first and in this case he may say one or both of the other Masses before it.

Praying for the Souls in Purgatory

On this day the Church commemorates the departed faithful. Last year the Holy Father highlighted the importance of Christians living "our relationship with the dead in the truth of faith, and looking to death and the afterlife in the light of Revelation".

"Today too it is necessary to spread the message of the reality of death and eternal life - a reality particularly subject to superstition and syncretism - so that Christian truth does not risk being confused with mythologies of various kinds", he said.

After recalling the words of St. Augustine to the effect that "everyone seeks 'blessed life' and happiness", Benedict XVI affirmed that "we don't know what this is or what it is like, but we feel ourselves attracted to it. It is a universal hope, shared by people of all times and places. he expression 'eternal life' is an attempt to give a name to this unquenchable hope: not an endless succession, but an immersion in the ocean of infinite love, where time, before and after, exist no more. Fullness of life and of joy is what we hope and expect from being with Christ.

"Today we renew our hope in eternal life, a hope truly founded in the death and resurrection of Christ", the Pope added. "Christian hope is never something merely individual, it is always a hope for others. Our lives are deeply linked to one another, and the good and bad each of us does always touches other people".

The Holy Father concluded: "The prayer of a pilgrim soul in the world can help another soul that continues purifying itself after death. This is why today the Church invites us to pray for our deceased loved ones and to spend time at their tombs in cemeteries".

Links:

• Fr Goffine's The Church's Year
• Gregorian Chant propers
• Sequence: Dies Iræ (video)
• Rorate Cæli: Blessed are those who die in the Lord
• A Catholic Life: All Souls Day Traditional Requiem Mass (2007)
  
• Abbot Cuthbert Johnson: Holy Souls
  

(image: Ebomania)