November, month of prayer for the dead
The month of November is a month of memory and hope—hope in the resurrection of the dead. This hope is founded in the passion, death and resurrection of Christ.
The Catholic Church has three modes of existence. It is divided into: The Pilgrim/militant Church (all the Christian faithful on earth), The Triumphant Church (all the saints in heaven) and The Suffering Church (the souls in purgatory) for whom we must pray the whole of this month.
On the First of November, we celebrate the great feast of All saints—a feast which evokes the memories of the countless baptised women and men who faithfully witnessed to Christ and are now enjoying the beatific vision in heaven (Revelations 7:9-17, apocalypse 7:2-4, 9-14). These saints in heaven offer an example to us the pilgrim Church of how to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. Those saints also challenge us to live our lives both with our sights set on the good things that await us in heaven, and with determination to make a positive difference in the lives of the poor and the less fortunate.
The Second of November is “All Souls Day”. Different cultures have different beliefs regarding man’s destiny after death. For some cultures in India for example, when one dies, he is reborn again as a cow. For them, cows are re-born human beings and it is a taboo to eat them. For us Catholics, when one dies, he either goes to heaven or to hell depending on his or her former behaviour. Since heaven is for the perfect spotless souls, there is a place of purification called purgatory where all human souls are purified and made fit for heaven. When the soul of a deceased person is in purgatory, it is helpless—it cannot pray for itself. It is only the prayers of the living that can liberate that soul. This explains why Catholics not only dedicate the whole month of November to pray for their deceased but also offer masses for them all through the year.
The biblical roots for this gesture can be traced in 2 Maccabees 12: 39-46—where Judas Maccabees a great general of the Jewish army collected money and sent it to Rome to pray for the souls of his fallen fighters. In Job 1: 13-22, Job prays for his children who had been struck by lightening. The Council of Trent also pronounced that the souls in purgatory need the prayers and works of charity of all Christian believers.
Let us therefore pray for our deceased brothers and sisters the whole of this month of November. A plenary indulgence is attached to the act of visiting the cemetery to pray for the deceased during the octave of November 1-8 , and a partial indulgence on other days. On November 2, one plenary indulgence can be gained by: visiting a church, receiving sacraments and praying for the pope’s intentions. “An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints” (Catechism of the Catholic Church-CCC 1471).
Following the so many deaths of the First World War, Pope Benedict XV in August 1915 granted each Catholic priest the blessed privilege of celebrating three Masses on the second of November; one for his own intentions, another for the souls in purgatory, and a third one for the intentions of the holy father.
Authored by Fr. Dr. Ronald Kigozi, Kansanga-Lecturer Ggaba.
