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All Souls Day (Nov 2)

November 02, 2025

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

INTROIT

COLLECT

Listen kindly to our prayers, O Lord,
and, as our faith in your Son,
raised from the dead, is deepened,
so may our hope of resurrection for your departed servants
also find new strength.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

FIRST READING Wisdom 3:1-9

The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace. For if before men, indeed, they be punished, yet is their hope full of immortality; chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself. In the time of their visitation they shall shine, and shall dart about as sparks through stubble; they shall judge nations and rule over peoples, and the LORD shall be their King forever. Those who trust in him shall understand truth, and the faithful shall abide with him in love: because grace and mercy are with his holy ones, and his care is with his elect.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM Ps 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6

R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

SECOND READING Romans 6:3-9

Brothers and sisters: Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life. For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection. We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. For a dead person has been absolved from sin. If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him.

ALLELUIA

GOSPEL John 6:37-40

Jesus said to the crowds: “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.”

CATENA NOVA

When once you have departed this life, there is no longer any place for repentance, no way of making satisfaction. Here life is either lost or kept. Here, by the worship of God and by the fruit of faith, provision is made for eternal salvation. Let no one be kept back, either by his sins, or by his years, from coming to obtain salvation. To him who still remains in this world there is no repentance that is too late. (St. Cyprian of Carthage)

Death is then no cause for mourning, for it is the cause of mankind’s salvation. Death is not something to be avoided, for the Son of God did not think it beneath His dignity, nor did He seek to escape it. (St. Ambrose of Milan)

Keep a clear eye toward life’s end. Do not forget your purpose and destiny as God’s creature. What you are in His sight, is what you are and nothing more. Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received…but only what you have given – a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage. (St. Francis of Assisi)

The more one longs for a thing, the more painful does deprivation of it become. And because, after this life, the desire for God, the Supreme Good, is intense in the souls of the just – (because this impetus toward Him, is not hampered by the weight of the body and that time of enjoyment, of the Perfect Good, would have come) had there been no obstacle. The soul suffers enormously, from the delay. (St. Thomas Aquinas)

There is no complete joy save in paradise. There is no joy to be compared to that of a soul in purification except that of those in paradise. As the rust of sin is consumed one becomes more and more open to God’s love. Just as a covered object left out in the sun can’t for all that be penetrated deeply by the sun’s light, so it's just those surface defects, our sins, need to be removed. Having opened oneself to being made wholly one with God’s will, one lets go of all sin. Only then can one open oneself fully to God. To the extent that God gives this gift one “sees into” God. Joy in God, oneness with God, is the end of every human person. Seeking this is an instinct implanted in us at our creation. We want to respond fully to the love of God and what we say about God and what it is like to open oneself fully is nothing in comparison with reality. When God finds one pure, as one was first created, then God tugs at us with a kind of glance. This draws and binds one to God with a love that is like pure fire.In that love, God so transforms us that we know nothing but God. And God doesn’t stop until we are brought to our perfection! .... It is the pure and intense love of God that does this. The overwhelming love of God gives one joy beyond words. (St. Catherine of Genoa)

I look at You, my Lord Jesus and think of Your most holy Body and I keep it before me, as a pledge of my own resurrection. Though I die, as die I certainly shall, nevertheless, I shall not forever die, for I shall rise again. O You, who are the Truth, I know and believe with my whole heart, that this very flesh of mine will rise again. I know, base and odious as it is at present, that it will one day, if I be worthy, be raised incorruptible and altogether beautiful and glorious. This I know, this by Your grace, I will ever keep before me. Amen. (St. John Henry Newman)

Even as our sorrow for those no longer among us remains etched in our hearts, let us entrust ourselves to the hope that does not disappoint (cf. Rom 5:5). Let us fix our gaze upon the Risen Christ and think of our departed loved ones as enfolded in his light. Let us allow the Lord’s promise of eternal life to resound in our hearts. He will destroy death forever. Indeed, he has already conquered it, opening for us the way to eternal life by passing through the valley of death during his Paschal mystery. Thus, united to him, we too may enter and pass through the valley of death. The Lord awaits us, and when we finally meet him at the end of our earthly journey, we shall rejoice with him and with our loved ones who have gone before us. May this promise sustain us, dry our tears, and raise our gaze upwards toward the hope for the future that never fades. (Pope Leo XIV)

HOMILY

I've been weeding my library lately and when leafing through an old book out popped a holy card from someone’s wake, someone about whom I had almost forgotten: His name was Richard Lilly and he died on July 17th, 1990. He was on his way to visit a woman whose life he had saved the previous night. But Richard never made it to the hospital. As he approached the on ramp to the 490 from East Rochester, he lost control of his motorcycle, crashed, and was killed. He was 23 years old. His best friend, Gary Siembor, caught suddenly in grief’s dark web, could not find the words to express his confusion of mind and heart. So he wrote something he called My Prayer. The following words were the center of the prayer, words about a friend, which stirred from the depths of a human spirit touched by death: Through us he will live on earth, Through him we will live in heaven.

Another young person comes to my mind this All Souls Day and for similar reasons. His name was Sammy Basso. An Italian man of deep faith, Sammy became the oldest person to survive the rapid aging disease called progeria until his death at 28. You've probably seen pictures of someone with this horrific disease. Sammy was living in an elderly man's body, with heart trouble, skin and bone problems, and high blood pressure.

Despite his condition, and all the physical suffering that accompanied it, Basso — himself a molecular biologist — wanted to use his time on earth to study and carry out research on the disease. He died one year ago on October 5. During his funeral homily, his bishop read from something Sammy wrote. An Italian newspaper dubbed it, "A Hymn to Life." It read in part,

If you are reading this text then I am no longer among the world of the living. At least not in the world of the living as we know it.… I want you to know first of all that I have lived my life happily, without exception, and I have lived it as a simple man, with the moments of joy and the difficult moments, with the desire to do well, succeeding sometimes and sometimes failing miserably. Since childhood, as you well know, progeria has deeply marked my life. Although it was but a very small part of who I am, I cannot deny that it has greatly influenced my daily life and, not least, my choices…. I do not know why and how I will leave this world, surely many will say that I have lost my battle against the disease. Don't listen! There was never any battle to fight, there was only a life to embrace as it was, with its difficulties, but still splendid, still great, neither reward nor condemnation, simply a gift given to me by God. (https://aleteia.org/2024/10/17/the-exquisite-last-letter-of-man-who-died-from-rare-progeria-disease).

Like Gary Siembor's prayer, Sammy's hymn has something of the poetic about it, no?

That's because poets often find words that fail theologians. Like the one who wrote the Book of Wisdom, when he said, The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away thought an affliction, their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace. Or the greatest poet of the Bible, the psalmist, who chanted on his harp, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want ...though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side.

Even St. Paul, normally given to logical argument, had occasional recourse to lyric, when the mystery of which he spoke, called for more than reason: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? Then there’s St. John, so taken with the glory of Christ, he took poetic license with the Word-made-flesh, having him speak in tones of poetic majesty: I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who believes in me will never die.

These words of faith take us beyond our limits. That’s why poets speak them best. They help us in moments when we might otherwise stammer. The words of Scripture, especially, help us in our weakness: the weakness we face when death invades life, the weakness which comes in grief’s wake, the weakness we feel in praising God for what St. Francis called “our sister, death,” the weakness we experience when saying good-bye to a parents and grandparents, children and friends. Because words are scarce, and the loss too fresh. How grateful we are in such moments for others’ words, which we can borrow — words inspired by the human spirit, mingled with the Spirit of God: spirits searching the deep things of God.

And when our spirits are enlightened by faith, we know that through us, the faithful departed do still indeed live on earth, and that, through them, we live in heaven. And no matter the circumstances of our life — or our death — they are meant to be embraced as they are with their difficulties, but still splendid, still great, neither reward nor condemnation, simply a gift given to us by God.

And how do we know this? Because we live and die in Christ: the One, above all, who lives on earth through us; the One, above all, through whom we live in heaven, our true home. For whether we live or die, we belong to Christ, and through him, to one another: whether in this earthly tent which soon must fold, or in that heavenly dwelling, where incorruptibility will enfold us. This truth poets put into words for us: the truth we celebrate in this Eucharist albeit in signs, the truth our departed brothers and sisters believed though challenged at times, the truth they now see clearly: for which we thank God, who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Who lives and reigns, forever and ever. Amen.

INTERCESSIONS

For our holy Father Pope Leo, for our Bishop, and all the clergy, that they may lead their flock to the pastures of eternal life.

For the Christian people, that God may confirm them in oneness and faith.

For the entire world, that it may be delivered from the scourge of war.

For those who are unemployed, hungry, or homeless, that God may show them a father’s care,

For our deceased relatives, friends, and benefactors, that they may have the reward of their goodness.

For our brothers and sisters who are saddened and troubled, that they may receive God’s comfort and aid.

God, our shelter and our strength, you listen in love to the cry of your people: hear the prayers we offer for our departed brothers and sisters. Cleanse them from their sins and grant them the fullness of redemption. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. (ICEL; 1998)

OFFERTORY ANTIPHON

OFFERTORY HYMN

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heav’n to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitation of thy glory and dominion, world without end. Amen. (John Donne)

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