The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed
"It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins." — 2 Maccabees 12:46
Feast Day: November 2 Instituted: 998 — Abbot Odilo of Cluny Adopted by Rome: Early fourteenth century Three Masses Granted to Every Priest: 1915 — Pope Benedict XV Rank: Commemoration (not a solemnity or Holy Day of Obligation; violet or black vestments) Order / Vocation: The Church Suffering, the souls being purified after death Patron of: The faithful departed · The grieving · Those who have no one left to pray for them · Everyone who prays for the dead
Sooner or later almost everyone ends up in the same place. It might be a cemetery on a gray afternoon, or the edge of a bed at two in the morning, or a kitchen where one chair is never used. Someone you loved is gone, and the questions come. Was he ready? Did she make peace with God before the end? Did I say enough, do enough, forgive enough?
Most of the world has nothing to say to those questions except time will help. The Church has something more to offer, and it is a task. You can still do something for the person you lost.
That is the whole meaning of All Souls. The Church believes that many who die in God's friendship still need to be made ready for the sight of him, and that the living can help them with prayer, with sacrifices, and above all with the Mass. It is a very old belief, older than any written creed, and it has kept more people from despair than any argument ever did.
This day is for the widow who still sets two cups out by mistake. It is for the parents who buried a child. It is for the man who did not make it to his father's deathbed, and for anyone who simply wants a place to put love that has nowhere else to go.
The Oldest Prayer in the Catacombs
Christians were praying for their dead long before anyone wrote a theology of it. Walk the Roman catacombs and you will find the walls scratched with short, plain prayers: may you live in God, may you rest in peace, a name, a request. Nobody wrote that to a person they believed had gone out like a candle.
By the second century the practice was settled. The community offered the Eucharist for the departed, often on the anniversary of the death. When Monica was dying at Ostia, she did not ask where her body would be buried. She asked her sons to remember her at the altar. She assumed, as every Christian of her day did, that this was the best gift the living could give.
The root goes deeper still, into the Old Testament. In the second book of Maccabees, Judas Maccabeus finds that some of his soldiers, killed in battle, had been wearing idolatrous charms under their tunics. He does not shrug and walk away. He takes up a collection, about two thousand silver drachmas, and sends it to Jerusalem so a sacrifice can be offered for them. The writer says plainly that this was a good and holy thing to do, because Judas believed in the resurrection of the dead.
So when the Church prays for the departed, it is not following a medieval invention. It is following Israel, and the apostles, and the men and women who scratched their prayers into the walls.
What Do You Do With Someone Who Died Half-Finished?
The difficulty was always a practical one. Most people do not die as saints, and most do not die as people who have utterly rejected God. They die somewhere in the middle. They love God and have never fully given him their hearts. They repented of the big sins but never quite broke the small, stubborn habits. They are headed for heaven and are not yet fit for it.
Scripture points toward what the Church came to call purification. Saint Paul writes of a man whose work is tested by fire, who is himself saved, but only as through fire. Scripture also says that nothing unclean can enter the presence of God. Put those together and a conclusion is hard to avoid. Some process of cleansing takes place after death for those who die in grace.
The Church named it purgatory and defined its teaching at the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, again at Florence in 1439, and again at Trent. It is worth being clear about what the Church does and does not say. Those in purgatory are saved. They will not be lost. They are not getting a second chance, because the choice for God has already been made. They are being made ready. How long it lasts, what it feels like, and whether the fire is literal are all questions the Church has never defined.
It is sometimes imagined as a place of dread. The saints who have written about it describe something else. Catherine of Genoa, who was given a deep understanding of it, saw that the souls there would not choose to be anywhere else. They want to be cleansed, because they can see how much they love God and how much still stands in the way. It hurts, and they are glad of it.
A Monastery Rings Its Bell
For a long time, prayer for the dead was scattered across the year, kept on one anniversary or another. Then, in 998, an abbot decided it needed one day of its own.
Odilo was the abbot of Cluny, the great reforming monastery in Burgundy, whose houses stretched across France and beyond. He ordered that on the day after All Saints, every monastery under Cluny's care should remember all the faithful departed. On the evening of November 1, the monks were to sing Vespers for the dead. The next morning there would be a special Mass, bells tolled slowly, and alms given to the poor in the names of the departed.
The monks were the right people to start it. Their whole lives were lived around prayer, and many of them did little else for the dead of their families, their benefactors, and their neighbors. A single day when the whole community stopped to remember them was a natural step.
It spread quickly. Other monasteries took it up. Dioceses followed. By the early fourteenth century it had been adopted in Rome, and it has been kept ever since on November 2.
Learning to Pray for the Dead
For the living, All Souls is a vocation, and Catholics have a name for it. Praying for the dead is one of the spiritual works of mercy. It stands next to feeding the hungry and visiting the sick. It is an act of love for someone who can no longer help themselves.
That is not always easy to accept. Some people want to believe their loved ones went straight to heaven and feel that praying for them is a kind of doubt. The Church does not ask anyone to assume the worst. It asks for humility. Only God knows the state of a soul, and a Mass offered for someone already in glory is never wasted. It benefits others, and it expresses love either way. A prayer for the dead is a way of staying in relationship with them.
Some people are angry. They have buried someone who died too young, or who died badly, or who died estranged from them, and prayer feels like an insult. The Church does not hurry that anger along. It has the Dies Irae and the Requiem Mass, which are full of fear and grief and plain pleading. Nothing in the liturgy for the dead pretends that death is a small thing.
What the Church offers, in the end, is a way to turn grief into action. You can offer a Mass. You can give alms in the person's name. You can fast for them, say the rosary for them, or go to confession on their behalf and offer your penance. It is concrete, and it lets love go on working.
What the Day Left Behind
The Church has built a whole body of practice around this commemoration.
The liturgy is the center of it. At the Requiem Mass the priest wears violet or black, and the prayers ask God to grant the dead eternal rest and let perpetual light shine on them. Before the Second Vatican Council the sequence was the Dies Irae, a thirteenth-century poem on the Last Judgment that has been sung at the funerals of countless generations of Catholics.
In 1915, a year into the First World War, with whole generations of young men dying across Europe, Pope Benedict XV gave every priest the right to offer three Masses on November 2. One could be for the intentions of the Church, one for all the faithful departed, and one for the priest's own intention. The reason was straightforward. There were too many dead and too few Masses.
There is also the custom of visiting cemeteries, which the Church encourages in the first days of November. Families bring flowers, light candles, and pray at the graves. The Church attaches indulgences to these acts, which can be applied only to the souls in purgatory. A plenary indulgence is available for devoutly visiting a church on November 2, and for visiting a cemetery and praying for the dead on each day from November 1 to 8. The usual conditions apply: confession, Communion, prayer for the pope's intentions, and freedom from attachment to sin. Ask your parish priest about the details in your country.
And there are the quiet habits that come from the day: writing a name in the parish book of the dead, a candle lit for a grandparent, the short prayer said at the end of grace.
The Objections
The doctrine has always had its critics. In the sixteenth century, some rejected purgatory altogether, and the Council of Trent responded by defending it firmly as part of the Church's constant teaching, going back to the apostles.
The Church also had to deal with abuses that gave the critics ammunition. Alms and indulgences had been misused, and the Council reformed the practice, stating plainly that no money could be asked for in connection with them. The doctrine stayed as it was. What changed were the habits that had grown up around it.
A quieter problem exists today. It has become common for every funeral to turn into a canonization. The deceased is declared to be in a better place, free of pain, looking down and smiling. Nobody prays for them, because everyone assumes they are already fine. It is a kindly impulse, but it leaves the dead without help and the living without anything to do. The Church's teaching is both more realistic and more loving. It treats death as serious, holds out hope for the person's salvation, and gives people a way to be useful.
There is an opposite error as well, which is to dwell on purgatory with fear. The Church does not want anyone to picture a prison of terror. Those in purgatory are the Church's own children, already safe, being prepared for joy.
The Last Hour
All Souls only makes sense against the way the Church treats the dying.
When a Catholic is near death, a priest comes. He hears confession, if the person can make one. He anoints the forehead and hands with oil. He gives Viaticum, which is Holy Communion for the journey, and the word means food for the road. A crucifix is placed where the person can see it. A candle burns. Family gathers and prays the rosary, or simply sits.
When the person is close to the end, the priest or a layperson says the prayer of commendation. It begins with the words Go forth, Christian soul, from this world. It names the angels, the apostles, the martyrs, and all the saints, and asks that the soul be received into peace. It is one of the most beautiful texts the Church has, and it is said by the bedside, in an ordinary room, for someone who may be too weak to hear it.
That prayer does not end at the death. The Church keeps praying through the funeral Mass and the burial, and then year after year. The commemoration of November 2 is where all of those prayers come together. The Church takes the work of the bedside and extends it past the grave, because it does not believe love ends at the grave.
Whom the Day Looks After
The Church has no formal patron for All Souls, but the commemoration carries a patronage in the traditional sense, and each part of it has a reason.
The faithful departed. The first and obvious one. The whole commemoration exists for those who have died in God's friendship and are being made ready for heaven.
The grieving. The day gives mourners something to do with their love. They are given a Mass to offer, a grave to visit, and a prayer to say. The Church does not tell the bereaved to move on. It tells them to keep praying.
Those who have no one left to pray for them. There are souls in purgatory with no living relatives, no one to remember their names, no one to light a candle. On November 2 the whole Church prays for them, along with everyone else. Many Catholics set aside part of their prayer on this day specifically for the most forgotten of the dead.
Everyone who prays for the dead. The living are patrons of this feast as well, in a sense. The souls in purgatory cannot help themselves, but it is held that they pray for us, and that those who pray for them will not be forgotten when their own time comes.
There is no incorrupt body and no single shrine for this commemoration. The proper place for it is wherever the dead are buried and wherever the Mass is said.
At a Glance
| Feast Day | November 2 |
| Rank | Commemoration; violet or black vestments; not a Holy Day of Obligation |
| Instituted | 998 — Abbot Odilo of Cluny (ordered for all monasteries under Cluny's care) |
| Adopted by Rome | Early fourteenth century |
| Three Masses Granted to Priests | 1915 — Pope Benedict XV |
| Preceded by | All Saints, November 1 |
| Doctrine Defined | Second Council of Lyons (1274), Council of Florence (1439), Council of Trent (1563) |
| Scriptural Roots | 2 Maccabees 12:38–46; 1 Corinthians 3:10–15 |
| Special Practices | Requiem Mass · Cemetery visits · Indulgences for the souls in purgatory (November 1–8 and November 2) |
| Liturgical Texts | Dies Irae · Requiem aeternam · Commendation of the Dying |
| Body | None; the place of the day is the grave and the altar |
| Patron of | The faithful departed · The grieving · Those who have no one left to pray for them · Everyone who prays for the dead |
| Known as | The Church Suffering · The Faithful Departed · All Souls |
| Their words | "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them." |
A Prayer for the Faithful Departed
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.
May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
Lord, have mercy on the souls of the dead, and let us meet them again in heaven.
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