All Saints Day is Our Day!

 All Saints Day Is Our Day!  

If there were ever a Catholic Feast Day that needed to be unpacked it would be the Feast of All Saints.

There is so much to know and learn and love about this beautiful feast which commemorates all the people in heaven.

First of all:  who is in heaven?  The Saints in heaven  are the all the people in our lives who died in the state of grace and in the love of God and were  brought into heaven—even if there were a time in Purgatory.

That means everyone who died in a right relationship with God—right back to the very first humans who lived and struggled and fought the good fight—just trying to be good as best they knew the good—and trying to take of care of those in their lives whom God had asked them to take care of.

There are two kinds of saints in heaven —canonized and un-canonized. Obviously, the vast, vast majority of saints would be the un-canonized.

Those would be the thousands and thousands of good people who die every day—maybe every hour of every day. These saints would be our grandparents, and parents, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, friends. 

In order to be a saint—one must simply be in heaven—or at least enduring the final purification of Purgatory before admission into heaven. To be considered a saint—at the very least—at the very minimum— one must—at the moment of death—not have any mortal sins on one’s soul.

And what is the moment of death? Well, death happens when a person’s body is no longer able to support the soul. The body has been so weakened by illness or accident or even just age, that the soul must leave the body—waiting to rejoin the body at the Resurrection of the Dead at the End of the World. (We can save that discussion for Easter.)

Now, the soul is the principal of life and intelligence and love and identity. The soul is— more than anything else— more than your hair color—your size, your gender, even your nationality—your soul is you! And at death your soul—you-- are brought before the Presence of God for your Particular Judgment—particular to you. And there, before God, you are judged on the merits or demerits of your life.

If you were supremely holy—and by supremely holy I mean not just in the state of grace—not just without mortal sin—but so full of the love of God that there is no stain of sin, no more selfishness present in your life, nothing to make up for. If that is the condition of your soul, then God will bring you immediately into heaven to receive the Eternal Reward which had been promised to you the Beatific Vision.

Now, to be brought into heaven immediately  means not only have you no sins to be forgiven, but also  that all the punishment due to any of your sins from your life has already been taken care by whatever prayers  and sufferings you made to God  in sacrificial reparation for your sins  when you were struggling through this veil of tears.

Now let me explain how that works.

We know that every sin that we  commit on this earth carries with it the necessity of punishment. Parents can tell us that! We must be punished for our sins either  in this life—or in the next life.

 If we commit mortal sins—truly serious violations of God’s laws—like murder, blasphemy, fornication— well, by those sins we merit, we deserve eternal punishment-- and that of course is Hell.  

In other words, if at the end of our lives—as our souls are separating from our bodies we refuse to be perfectly sorry for our sins, or have rejected confession,  God has reserved hell for those who so choose.

But suppose at the end  of our lives we are sorry; and, maybe even better, we have received confession, then God will not send us to hell—precisely because we were truly sorry for our sins He forgives us.  

Out of His immense love for us who are contrite  He  has taken away  eternal punishment.

But we still have to make up for the evil, disorder and  suffering that our sins—even though they were forgiven—caused in the world.

We who committed those sins have to compensate  for the suffering we put into the world by our own suffering. We will do so either here on earth by our prayers and sacrifices or  in Purgatory.

 In another way of expressing it,  we might say that if we have not prayed enough or sacrificed enough or suffered enough here on earth to make up for our sins—then we must do so in the next life in Purgatory.

For example,  if after I committed the sin of murder I  went to confession and got three Hail Marys as my penance—does that make up for the suffering I caused by my sin of murder? Do three Hail Marys compensate for the infinite flow of tears of the widow? Do three Hail Marys make up for the suffering and hard times my murder visited upon  the now fatherless children?  I don’t think so.

Perhaps the pain of Purgatory is that God shows us where and how people suffered because of the sins we committed. In all cases, our punishment in Purgatory will be equal to our offense. We will pay ounce for ounce. That is God’s justice.

WE can put it this way:  we had asked for God’s forgiveness, He will do so and gladly.  Thus we will go to heaven.  But t we will pay for the evil we have put into the world —and that is Purgatory.

Surely we can say that those souls in Purgatory are counted among the saved and that they are, therefore, saints. In fact we are allowed to believe that the souls in Purgatory—like the saints in heaven—can pray for us. And I am sure they do—praying that we do not make the same mistakes they did!

 All Saints Day celebrates everyone in heaven as well as those guaranteed to go to heaven-- the Souls in Purgatory. 

Now the day after All Saints day is All Souls Day—and they are intimately related; for on All Souls Day we pray   that our prayers-- our acts of love and sacrifice for the souls of the All the Faithful Departed will be credited to them;  and when they have filled the cup of love in Purgatory , they will join the ranks of the full saints in light—sooner by our prayers than without them.

That, of course,  is why we pray for the dead. We can accompany them as we did on earth, but now right through the gates of heaven.

That is why when you go to a Catholic wake—there is always a kneeler by the coffin.  We  pray at a wake not so much for ourselves but for the soul of the one who has died. We are praying that if they are in Purgatory because of just punishment due to sin--then   by our prayerful love they may  be released to heaven sooner.

That is also why we have intentions (not petitions) at Mass. Most of the names we see in the bulletin after the Mass time listing are names of dead people. We offer Masses for the repose of their souls.

Those named specially at Mass are not some sort of parish or familial   tribute to the memory of our loved ones. The mass intention is our loving prayer—through the power of the Holy Sacrifice of the mass-- imploring God to apply the special  fruits of that Mass  to the soul in Purgatory.

So all of this is to say that All Saints Day is the day of all the saints in heaven-- even if they got there by way of Purgatory. It is a day of celebration because they are in the place God had intended for them and for us! from the beginning—by His Side- in His bosom- close to his heart—and can there be anything more joyful than that?!