November is the month of the saints, the month of the dead, and the month when the Church closes one year and quietly opens the next. Below you will find the calendar, what the Sundays are about, what the Church teaches about praying for the dead, the saints who fill the weekdays, and a handful of ideas for living all this at home.
The Calendar
The dates below follow the General Roman Calendar, with a few U.S. observances marked. Two optional memorials, St. Albert the Great (15 Nov) and St. Cecilia (22 Nov), land on Sundays and give way to the Sunday Mass. Your country or diocese may add feasts of its own, so check your local calendar before you print anything.
| Date | Observance | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Sun 1 Nov | All Saints | Solemnity |
| Mon 2 Nov | All Souls (All the Faithful Departed) | Commemoration |
| Tue 3 Nov | St. Martin de Porres | Optional memorial |
| Wed 4 Nov | St. Charles Borromeo | Memorial |
| Sun 8 Nov | 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time | Sunday |
| Mon 9 Nov | Dedication of the Lateran Basilica | Feast |
| Tue 10 Nov | St. Leo the Great | Memorial |
| Wed 11 Nov | St. Martin of Tours | Memorial |
| Thu 12 Nov | St. Josaphat | Memorial |
| Fri 13 Nov | St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (USA) | Memorial |
| Sun 15 Nov | 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time; World Day of the Poor | Sunday |
| Mon 16 Nov | St. Margaret of Scotland; St. Gertrude | Optional memorial |
| Tue 17 Nov | St. Elizabeth of Hungary | Memorial |
| Wed 18 Nov | Dedication of the Basilicas of Sts. Peter and Paul; St. Rose Philippine Duchesne (USA) | Optional memorial |
| Sat 21 Nov | Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary | Memorial |
| Sun 22 Nov | Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe | Solemnity |
| Mon 23 Nov | St. Clement I; St. Columban; Bl. Miguel AgustΓn Pro (USA) | Optional memorial |
| Tue 24 Nov | St. Andrew DΕ©ng-LαΊ‘c and Companions | Memorial |
| Wed 25 Nov | St. Catherine of Alexandria | Optional memorial |
| Sun 29 Nov | First Sunday of Advent | Sunday |
| Mon 30 Nov | St. Andrew, Apostle | Feast |
Nearly all of November belongs to Ordinary Time, so the color at Mass is green, the color of a seed that has just broken the soil. It is the Church’s way of saying that hope is still growing, even while the readings talk about endings. And they do talk about endings. Death, judgment, heaven and hell, the return of Christ: these are the themes of the last weeks of the year, and the Church does not apologize for them. She would rather we think about these things now, calmly, than for the first time at the last minute.
Two details are worth knowing for 2026. Until the end of the month the Sunday Gospels come from Matthew (Cycle A) and the weekday readings follow Year II. On 29 November everything resets. The vestments turn violet, the Sunday readings move to Mark (Cycle B), and the weekday readings switch to Year I.
The Pope’s prayer intention for the month fits the mood. It is for the proper use of wealth: that we would not give in to selfishness, and that what we have would serve the common good and the people who have less. You will hear that theme again on 15 November.
The Five Sundays
1 November, All Saints. The Gospel is the Beatitudes, which is exactly right. Everything Jesus says on that mountain, poor in spirit, merciful, pure of heart, peacemakers, is a description of the people we are celebrating. Since the feast falls on a Sunday this year it replaces the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, so one Mass fulfills both obligations.
8 November. Ten bridesmaids wait for the bridegroom. Five brought extra oil and five didn’t, and when the call comes at midnight the second group has to go and buy some. The parable isn’t really about oil. It’s about the fact that some things can’t be borrowed at the last minute. Faith that has been lived for years is one of them.
15 November. A man leaves on a trip and hands out his money: five talents to one servant, two to another, one to a third. The first two invest and double it. The third, afraid of his master, buries the coin. The master is delighted with the first two and furious with the third. What strikes people on a fresh reading is that the master never asks for a particular amount. He asks only that we use what we were given. It is also the day of the World Day of the Poor, established by Pope Francis in 2016, so many parishes pair the Mass with a collection or a meal.
22 November, Christ the King. The year ends with the great scene of the sheep and the goats. The king on his throne never asks the nations about their theology or their achievements. He asks whether they fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, and visited the sick and the prisoner, and he says that whatever was done for them was done for Him. There is no more demanding Gospel in the whole year.
29 November, First Sunday of Advent. The new year starts with a single word from Mark’s Gospel: watch. The master of the house has gone away and no one knows when he will be back, in the evening, at midnight, at cockcrow or at dawn. It sounds much like the readings we have just finished, and that is the point. Advent is not a break from the end of the year but the same message, with a manger added.
The Holy Souls
The Church has long given November to prayer for the dead. It is easy to see why. The days are shorter, the leaves are down, and even people who never think about such things find their minds drifting toward the people they have lost.
The day we keep for them, 2 November, goes back to the abbey of Cluny in France. Around the year 998 the abbot, St. Odilo, asked his monks to remember all the dead in prayer on the day after All Saints. The idea spread and eventually reached the whole Western Church. Placing the two days side by side says something. The saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory are one family, and we are the family still on the road. Priests may celebrate three Masses on All Souls, so that more of the dead can be remembered at the altar.
Here is what the Church encourages us to do for them:
- Have Masses offered. Nothing we can do is worth more. Many parishes keep a book of names open throughout November.
- Gain indulgences for them. More on this below.
- Pray. The Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet and the Way of the Cross can all be offered for the dead.
- Give alms and make small sacrifices for their sake.
- Remember the forgotten. Plenty of souls have no one left to pray for them. Include them when you pray for your own.
The indulgences of November are among the most generous the Church offers, and all of them can be applied only to the souls in purgatory. A plenary indulgence is available on each day from 1 to 8 November for devoutly visiting a cemetery and praying for the dead. Another can be gained on 2 November by visiting a church or public oratory and reciting the Our Father and the Creed. On other days a visit to a cemetery with prayer for the dead, even only in the heart, earns a partial indulgence, and so does praying the Eternal Rest. The usual conditions for a plenary indulgence apply: sacramental Confession, Holy Communion, prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father, and a heart detached from sin, even venial sin. One Confession can cover several indulgences, but only one plenary indulgence can be gained a day. Your parish priest will gladly answer questions.
One more thing. The Church hasn’t defined it, but Catholics have long believed that the Holy Souls pray for us too, and many ask for their help. It is a lovely idea, and a very Catholic one. We help them, and they help us.
Meeting the Saints of November
1 November: All Saints. The feast began as a celebration of martyrs and was gradually widened to include every saint, known or unknown. By the ninth century it had settled on 1 November. The first reading at Mass comes from Revelation: a crowd too large to count, from every nation and language, standing before the throne. That should encourage us, because it means heaven is not mostly populated by people with their names in books. Most of the saints are grandmothers, farmers, nurses and fathers whose holiness nobody ever wrote down. The Second Vatican Council said plainly that every Christian is called to be one of them (Lumen Gentium, chapter 5).
3 November: St. Martin de Porres. Born in Lima in 1579 to a Spanish nobleman and a freed woman of African descent, Martin spent his childhood being reminded that he did not quite belong. He joined the Dominicans as a lay brother, the lowest rank, and then spent his life as the community’s infirmarian, nursing anyone who turned up at the door, whatever their race or class. He is usually shown with a broom, because he considered no job beneath him. A well-loved story says he once persuaded a dog, a cat and a mouse to eat from the same dish. He was canonized in 1962 and is a patron of racial harmony and social justice.
4 November: St. Charles Borromeo. A cardinal at 22, thanks to an uncle who happened to be pope, Charles could have lived very comfortably. Instead he became one of the great reformers after the Council of Trent. As Archbishop of Milan he founded seminaries, visited every corner of his huge diocese, and when the plague struck in 1576 he stayed in the city, organized relief and sold his own belongings to pay for food. Seminarians and catechists look to him as a patron.
9 November: the Lateran Basilica. Most people assume the Pope’s cathedral is St. Peter’s. It isn’t. It is St. John Lateran, and the inscription over its door calls it the mother and head of all the churches of the city and the world. Today we keep its dedication as a feast, not out of devotion to a building, but because the church stands for the unity of all Catholics with the Bishop of Rome.
10 November: St. Leo the Great. Pope from 440 to 461, Leo led the Church while the Roman Empire fell apart. His great letter on the nature of Christ, fully God and fully man, was read at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, where the bishops are said to have cried out that Peter had spoken through Leo. In 452 he went out to meet Attila the Hun and persuaded him to turn away from Rome. He is a Doctor of the Church.
11 November: St. Martin of Tours. Martin was a young Roman soldier in what is now Hungary when, one freezing winter day at the gates of Amiens, he cut his cloak in half and gave one half to a beggar. That night he dreamed of Christ wearing the cloak. He left the army, became a monk and eventually Bishop of Tours, and spent his life taking the Gospel to the French countryside. In many parts of Europe his feast is Martinmas, with lantern processions for the children and a roast goose for dinner.
12 November: St. Josaphat. An Eastern Catholic monk who became Archbishop of Polotsk, in modern Belarus, Josaphat worked hard to bring Eastern and Western Christians together. A mob killed him for it in 1623. He is often described as the first Eastern saint formally canonized by Rome, in 1867, and he is a reminder that the Church breathes with two lungs, East and West.
13 November: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (USA). She wanted to be a missionary in China, but Pope Leo XIII told her to go west instead of east. So she went to New York in 1889 with a handful of sisters, and over the next three decades the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, whom she founded, opened schools, orphanages and hospitals for immigrants all over the Americas. She was afraid of water all her life and crossed the Atlantic some thirty times anyway. In 1946 she became the first U.S. citizen to be canonized. She is the patron of immigrants.
15 November: St. Albert the Great. His memorial gives way to the Sunday this year, but he deserves a line. Albert was a German Dominican and the teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas, a Doctor of the Church and an enthusiastic student of nature. He is the patron of scientists, and he believed that faith and reason could never really be at odds.
16 November: St. Margaret of Scotland and St. Gertrude. Margaret was an English princess who became queen of Scotland, mother of eight, and a woman who fed the poor before she ate herself. Gertrude, a Benedictine nun at Helfta in Germany, wrote down visions that helped shape the devotion to the Sacred Heart. One saint lived in a palace and one in a cloister, and both were thoroughly holy.
17 November: St. Elizabeth of Hungary. A princess married at fourteen and widowed at twenty, Elizabeth gave herself to the poor. She built a hospital, cared for the sick with her own hands and joined the Third Order of St. Francis. The famous story says that when her family caught her carrying bread to the poor and made her open her cloak, the loaves had turned into roses. She died at 24 and is a patron of Catholic charities.
18 November. The optional memorial honors the dedication of the two great Roman basilicas built over the tombs of Peter and Paul. In the United States the day also remembers St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, a French nun who crossed the ocean in 1818 to open schools on the frontier. In her seventies she moved to a Potawatomi mission, where the people called her Woman-Who-Prays-Always.
21 November: The Presentation of Mary. The feast rests on an ancient tradition, found in early Christian writings, that Mary was offered to God in the Temple as a small child. Eastern Christians keep it as the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, with great joy. It is a good day to renew a consecration to Our Lady.
22 November: Christ the King. Pope Pius XI created this feast in 1925, in an encyclical called Quas Primas, because he felt the world was forgetting that Christ is Lord of nations as well as of hearts. It was first kept on the last Sunday of October, and in 1970 it was moved to the last Sunday of the liturgical year, where it works much better as an ending. Many Catholics pray the Act of Dedication of the Human Race to Jesus Christ the King on this day. St. Cecilia, the Roman martyr honored as patron of music, shares the date but yields to the Sunday.
23 November. Three people share this optional memorial. St. Clement I, fourth pope, wrote a letter to the Corinthians around the year 96, one of the oldest Christian writings outside the New Testament. St. Columban, an Irish monk, crossed to the continent and founded the monasteries of Luxeuil and Bobbio. And in the U.S., Bl. Miguel Pro, a Mexican Jesuit who ministered in secret during the persecution of the Church, was executed on 23 November 1927. Facing the firing squad with arms outstretched, he shouted “Viva Cristo Rey!”, which makes his memorial a good companion to the feast of Christ the King the day before.
24 November: St. Andrew DΕ©ng-LαΊ‘c and Companions. Over more than two and a half centuries, Christians were persecuted in Vietnam, and 117 of them, Vietnamese, Spanish and French, bishops, priests, catechists and ordinary laypeople, were canonized together in 1988. Fr. Andrew DΕ©ng-LαΊ‘c, a Vietnamese priest executed in 1839, lends his name to the group.
25 November: St. Catherine of Alexandria. Tradition describes a brilliant young woman who out-argued the pagan philosophers sent to dissuade her and was martyred on a spiked wheel. Historians can’t confirm the details, but the devotion has been popular for centuries. She is a patron of students and philosophers.
30 November: St. Andrew the Apostle. The Gospel of John says that Andrew was the first to follow Jesus, and that the very first thing he did was to go and find his brother Peter (John 1:35–42). Tradition has him preaching in Greece and dying in Patras on an X-shaped cross, which is why that shape is called a saltire. He is patron of Scotland, Russia and Greece, and the Patriarchate of Constantinople honors him as its founder. Many Catholics begin the St. Andrew Christmas Novena today.
Living the Month at Home
None of this has to stay on paper. A few ideas that families and parishes have used:
For All Saints, hold a saints’ party in place of the usual Halloween scramble. Let the children dress as their patron saints, or the saint they like best, and have everyone guess who is who. Bobbing for apples is optional, but the story-telling is not.
For All Souls, go to the cemetery together. Pray the Eternal Rest at the graves you know, and pull a few weeds from the ones nobody visits. At home, put a candle and some photographs on a small table and pray there in the evenings. If your family has a food tradition for the dead, such as soul cakes in England or the sweet bread of the Day of the Dead in Mexico, this is the day for it.
For Martinmas (11 Nov), make paper lanterns and walk with the children after dark, singing. Share a meal with a neighbor, in the spirit of the cloak.
For the World Day of the Poor and St. Elizabeth (15 and 17 Nov), pick one concrete thing: a food collection, a visit to a lonely neighbor, a gift to a Catholic charity. Bread is a good symbol.
For Christ the King (22 Nov), go to Mass as a family and pray the Act of Dedication together. Parishes often hold a procession or an hour of adoration.
Before Advent, go to Confession in the last week of the month, set out the Advent wreath, and decide on one small daily practice for December, such as ten minutes with the Gospel or an extra decade of the Rosary.
If you like to spot symbols in church art, November gives you plenty: a crown and palm for All Saints, a candle for the dead, a broken spiked wheel for Catherine, a saltire cross for Andrew, a soldier splitting his cloak for Martin, and a basket of bread or roses for Elizabeth.
Three Prayers
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
Merciful Father, remember the souls of Your servants who have gone before us with the sign of faith. Forgive what needs forgiving, finish what You began in them, and bring them to the light of Your face. Remember especially those no one remembers, and those I have loved and lost. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, King of the universe, You reign from the Cross. Be King in my heart, in my home, and in my country. Teach me to find You in the hungry, the sick and the forgotten, and to serve You there. Thy kingdom come. Amen.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.
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