An angel frees the souls from Purgatory (detail), Ludovico Caracci,
1610, oil on canvas, Pinacoteca Vaticana
The Solemnities of All Saints (1 Nov) and All Souls (2 Nov) are particularly poignant to me this year.
I lost my husband to cancer in March, and I remember thinking, as I said goodbye to his body, that Chemistry and Biology could only go a certain way to explaining what had happened. The essence of Bill, his irrepressible cheerfulness and zest for life, his forgetfulness of self, his ridiculous jokes, his kindness and generosity, the way he would give a chirpy greeting to everyone he passed – in short, those elements which made up his transcendent soul – had moved on, and all that was left behind was merely a shell.
As Fr Barron says in his homily,
We are more than our bodies, more than our memories, more than our imagination, more than our senses. There is a mysterious spiritual capacity within us. That’s what the church calls the soul.
Click here to listen:
Fr Barron also has a beautiful take on All Saints’ Day here:
The takeaway message is that once you surrender your life to Christ, you find your deepest self. The saints are those people who have surrendered their lives to God so completely, that they have lit up the world around them with God’s love. Yes, the saints are heroes and role models but they are also still alive, and they are our spiritual friends – and we can ask them to pray for us and act on our behalf (think of St Therese of Lisieux – ‘I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth.’)
Here are this Sunday’s readings for Australia.
Word format: All Souls Day Year A
Pdf format: All Souls Day Year A
Don’t forget Fr Augustine will join with other Northern suburbs’ priests to celebrate Mass for All Souls at the Chapel at Pinnaroo Memorial Park, Whitfords Avenue on 2 November at 2.30 p.m. We particularly remember our former parishioner, Veronica (Ronnie) Spratling, who died on 29 October in Victoria. Our condolences to all the Spratling family.
I have also written a list of deceased members of our parish in the intentions section of the Newsletter. If I have left anyone out, please email me and I will add them to our November list.
Catholic in Yanchep 