The Solemnity of All Saints provides the ultimate perspective for our lives. This celebration urges us to strive to be with those whom the Gospel declares forever “blessed”, so that we may at last “rejoice and be glad” that “our reward is great in heaven”. This is our goal by God’s grace — “his free and undeserved help” — to be finally with those “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb”.
A gathering anticipated in the celebration of every Mass, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, “the Eucharist is the anticipation of the heavenly glory”. On All Souls, we begin our November prayer for those beyond death’s horizon, who long to be purified and brought to the perfection of love.
