Let's celebrate the days of All Saints and All Souls

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On Sunday, we will observe the Solemnity of All Saints, and Monday is All Souls Day. During these two days, we honor all those “who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith,” as the Eucharistic Prayer in the Holy Mass states.

This feast is also an important tenet of our faith. Every time we pray the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed, we profess with the “communion of saints,” and that these men and women who have been granted their place in heaven continue to be a part of the Church.

The Feast of All Saints refers those who died and are in heaven, whom we remember and honor for their lives of holiness dedicated in prayer, Christian virtues and sacrifices for the love of God and in heroic imitation of Christ. They were ordinary men and women like us, from various races and backgrounds. They were human beings beset by weakness and failings, but by the grace of God experienced conversion and transformation to be able to dedicate their lives to God with great fidelity and commitment. In other words, saints were not born saints but strived and struggled to become saints.

Honoring our Church heroes helps us to remember our own identity, vocation or basic calling, and the very purpose of our lives. By virtue of our baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit, God has infused us with his grace to empower us to respond to that call and pursue it. Hence, the Feast of All Saints is an important day and a timely reminder for us. Sadly, this message often is ignored; many of us do not take God’s invitation seriously.

The saints are not only those whom the Church has officially recognized or canonized, but also the deceased unknown or unfamiliar to us. Our tradition of praying for the faithful departed is based in Scripture: “It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins” (2 Maccabees 12:46). This theology is further developed in “Lumen Gentium,” Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: “The union of the wayfarers with the brethren who have gone to sleep in the peace of Christ is not in the least weakened or interrupted, but on the contrary, according to the perpetual faith of the Church, is strengthened by communication of spiritual goods.” On All Souls Day, we pray for all the departed, that in God’s mercy and compassion they may find entrance to heaven.

Furthermore, we pray to the saints not only for intercession, but also for inspiration, because their selfless actions are models to follow in imitation of Christ. It happens that during this month of October, we have new models and exemplars of how we can be one like them. On Oct. 10, 15-year-old Carlo Acutis was beatified. Shortly before the Italian teenager died of leukemia in 2006, he created a website that documented Eucharistic miracles all around the world.

In his homily during the beatification Mass, Archbishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi said that the proclamation of Acutis as “blessed” “is good news, a strong proclamation that a young man of our time, one like many, was conquered by Christ and became a beacon of light for those who want to know him and follow his example.”

 Father Michael McGivney (1852-1890), the son of Irish immigrants, was born in Waterbury, Conn., and was ordained a priest in 1877. He founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882 at St. Mary’s Parish in New Haven, Conn., and will be beatified on Oct. 31. Fr. McGivney formed the Knights of Columbus on the principles of charity, unity and fellowship anchored in their strong Catholic faith and active participation in the life of the Church. A Mass of Thanksgiving will be celebrated at his former parish, St. Mary’s in New Haven on All Saints Day. Here in the Diocese of Salt Lake City, I will celebrate a Mass of Thanksgiving at the Cathedral of the Madeleine on Nov. 17.

Let us not forget that God calls not only bishops, priests and nuns to be holy, but all people. We are all saints in the making. We may think it is very hard to be a saint, but St. Teresa of Calcutta gave us an example and great advice: “Do ordinary things with great love.” Hence, the path to holiness is open, and God likewise calls all of us to the glorious possibility of joining the great host of the blessed, the virgins, the apostles, the martyrs and of living in heaven with our Lord forever.