As the Church begins a new liturgical year, the readings continue with the theme that characterized the end of the previous liturgical year, the Second Coming of Christ.  We often associate the Season of Advent exclusively with the first coming of Christ in His Incarnation.  This theme is taken up more intentionally in the final days of Advent, but it is the Second Coming of Christ that the Church invites us to reflect on with greater attention, for we do not know the day or the hour, thus the need to always be prepared.  This has hit close to home over the past few weeks here at the Cathedral as we have had a larger number of parishioners and family members of parishioners who have passed away, some of them rather unexpectedly.  We keep all of them and their families in our prayers in a special way.

As I mentioned in my article two weeks ago, we find ourselves in the final few paragraphs of Pope Benedict’s document on Christian Hope, Spe salvi.  In the sadness of the loss of our loved ones, we look for that light of hope given to us in the promises of Jesus Christ who has conquered death through His death and Resurrection.  In these final paragraphs, the Holy Father is reflecting on the Church’s doctrine on Purgatory, a topic which many shy away from as being something negative, but when we truly understand the beauty of this teaching, we cannot help but be buoyed up with hope.

In the previous paragraph, the pope noted the two extremes of where people can find themselves at the end of their lives as they stand before the judgment seat of Christ.  On the one hand, there are those who are utterly pure, filled with love for God and neighbor, and free from any sin, they enter immediately into Heaven.  On the other extreme, there are those who have definitively rejected God, lived for hatred and suppressed all love.  They have consciously chosen in life to be apart from God, and after death, they remain in that condition they have freely chosen.  But as the Holy Father notes: “Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life.” (SS 46) He then offers the following explanation of what he (and really the Church) presumes for the majority of those people of faith who die in friendship with the Lord:

For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. (ibid.)

He goes on to explain how the firm foundation of faith in Christ upon which these lives are built cannot be destroyed by death, giving a firm hope in the promise of sharing in the victory of Heaven.  But those places of impurity need to be dealt with, and the pope appeals to the words of St. Paul who speaks of a sort of fire which burns away that which is not of God, so that souls can be fully pure and capable of being admitted into Heaven.  This “fire” of purification after death is Purgatory.  Though the image evokes fear and seems somehow at odds with a loving God, the Holy Father will explain in the next paragraph a way of understanding this fire in a way which is far more hopeful and consoling.

Psalm 63 is one of the most frequently prayed Psalms. In the Liturgy of the Hours, the liturgical prayer of the entire Church, which is prayed daily by all priests and religious, and many lay people, this Psalm is set for morning prayer for every major feast day. It begins with the Psalmist expressing a deep longing for God. God is like water for a desert land. It moves into a section of praise and then ends with deep sentiments of trust in God’s providential care. 

In the third verse of the Psalm (in the NRSVCE translation) we read these words, “Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.” This is a strong statement, to say the least. This “steadfast love,” is also sometimes translated as “mercy” or simply, “love.” The translation that Saint Augustine used when commenting on this verse in his Expositions of the Psalms goes like this: “Because your mercy is better than all possible lives, my lips will praise you.” These words are slightly different, and even stronger! Essentially, there is nothing better than this mercy.

Saint Augustine’s reflection on these lines mirrors a somewhat well-remembered phrase from the liturgy of the Mass. We hear in one of the prefaces for the Eucharistic prayer, “… although you have no need of our praise, yet our thanksgiving is itself your gift….” The very act of our giving thanks to God is a great gift to us from him. He grants us this gift of prayer, and it brings us blessings to thank him. 

In a similar way, regarding Psalm 63:3, Saint Augustine wrote these beautiful words:

“My lips would not be praising you if your mercy had not taken the initiative with me. Thanks to your own gift I praise you, through your own mercy I praise you. I could not praise God if he had not given me the power to praise him.” (Translated by Maria Boulding, Exposition of Psalm 63, 12).

Praise of God is a type of prayer that is entirely other-focused. We lift our minds and hearts to God, and in praise, we kind of forget ourselves. Because of our self-forgetfulness, when we praise God, we experience a joy that is unmatched by almost any other type of prayer. This joy is a true gift from God. The praise we give him is a true gift from God. Each of these gifts come, in their own way, from the depths of God’s heart. 

God wants us to turn to him with our whole being. He knows that in this life we can never truly forget ourselves entirely. We are body/soul creatures affected by sin, so we will always experience distractions and inclinations to selfishness. Praise as a practice of prayer, however, can turn our hearts toward God. Praise of him and his greatness can begin to strip away the earthly desires we struggle against. 

God has shown us mercy in our lives. We can thank him for that mercy, but we can also praise his Mercy. Your mercy is beyond all our understanding, O Lord. It is better than all possible lives. Your steadfast love is better than life itself. I praise your mercy, O Lord!

In October 2024, I attended a Pastor Workshop hosted by the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis.  In one of the sessions, one of the seasoned pastors from that archdiocese mentioned how he had developed the practice of offering an annual State of the Parish address the Sunday before Thanksgiving.  The thought was to situate his reflections on the previous year in the context of gratitude for all of the blessings they had received, serving as a reason to be hopeful for the year ahead.  Inspired by this, I offered my first State of the Parish homily last November on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and I am happy to continue that tradition this year as well.

Included in this bulletin, you will find an insert with some numbers which highlight certain aspects of the state of the parish over the past year, including financial numbers, sacramental numbers, and Mass attendance.  Though these numbers give some insights into the past year, they only provide a small part of what has taken place over the past year.  As I have been preparing for this weekend, reflecting on all that has taken place, there is a word that describes what I am feeling regarding the current state of our parish, and what I expect looking forward.  That word, likely not surprising, is hope.

Admittedly, my view may be somewhat biased toward this theme as it has been the underlying topic of all the bulletin articles that I have written over the past year, having offered a paragraph-by-paragraph commentary on Pope Benedict XVI’s beautiful encyclical on Christian Hope, Spe salvi.  My reason for examining this document is due to Pope Francis declaring 2025 to be a Jubilee Year of Hope, so that theme of hope has been very much front and center.

Though I will reflect more specifically on my reasons for hope for our parish in my homily for this weekend, I will highlight one here.  An aspect of this past year that gives me so much hope for the future is the large number of weddings in which I have been involved.  At one point, there were four weekends in a row with weddings here at the Cathedral.  I had the privilege of celebrating three of those, and though I did not celebrate the fourth, I had the joy of doing the marriage preparation for that couple.  In addition to the several weddings celebrated here, I also attended other weddings outside of the parish, most recently last weekend in Indianapolis for a former student of mine from the time I taught at St. Anthony High School in Effingham.  Related to these weddings is the joyful news from several other recently-married couples who have shared with me that they are pregnant or have welcomed new children into their families over the past year.

During a time when it seems as though Catholic weddings and baptisms have declined, this past year has shown that that trend is not a given, but that it can be turned around.  The skeptic might doubt such an optimistic view, but I see these instances as reasons to be very hopeful for the future of the Church, both here in our parish, and on a larger scale in the Church.  Please pray for these young couples and for their families.  They will be a key part of the future of carrying on the life of our parish that we have all been blessed to receive from those who have come before us.

In his commentary on Psalm 85 (86), Saint Augustine uses a very relatable image to describe an experience many of us have when we go to pray. We experience distraction. Sometimes distraction is not our fault, and sometimes it is maybe a little bit (or more) our fault than we would like to admit! I am going to quote this longer passage because it really only works as a whole and teaches a lot about cultivating some discipline in prayer:

“Imagine a man whose friend has begun a conversation with him. He wants to reply to his friend’s remarks, but then he sees his friend turning away from him and saying something to someone else. Who would tolerate such behavior? Or suppose you appeal to a judge, and arrange with him to hear you in a certain place, and then as you are addressing him you suddenly brush him aside and begin to chatter to your friend, will he put up with you? Yet God puts up with the hearts of all those people who say their prayers while thinking about all sorts of things. I will not even mention evil thoughts; I am leaving out of consideration thoughts that sometimes run on perverse lines, abhorrent to God. Simply to think about irrelevant matters is to dishonor him with whom you have begun to converse. Your prayer is a conversation with God: when you read, God is speaking to you; when you pray, you are speaking to God” (St. Augustine, translated by Maria Boulding, Exposition of Psalm 85). 

Again, while that is a longer quote, I think it is an excellent image for the way we often find ourselves distracted before God. When we pray, we can consider him a conversation partner. It takes some effort and discipline on our part but holding that attention on Him and His words can be a very fruitful place to remain in prayer. I remember a friend of mine in the seminary kept a quote up on a markerboard outside his room: “Prayer consists of attention.” 

To speak about prayer in this way is not to make prayer a thing purely of human effort. The attentiveness is a real cooperation in the grace of God. God gives the gift of that attentiveness to his presence and his word, and for our part, we must cooperate and do what we can to keep our minds on the Lord and free of needless distraction.

Distraction, we know, is a part of prayer. I have found that one of the best ways to “fight” distraction is to make the distraction itself a part of my conversation. If all I can think about when praying is the baseball game coming on later, then I tell that to Jesus. If all I can think about is what I said to someone earlier, then I tell that to Jesus. If all I can think about is the homily I am going to give in three days, then I tell that to Jesus. You get the idea. We are incarnate creatures and the thoughts in our mind are going to be a part of our prayer. When evil thoughts do come, as St. Augustine mentions, they are meant to be ignored, shunned, or given to Jesus as something to be destroyed, not tolerated. 

I find myself especially drawn to the last sentence: “When you read, God is speaking to you; when you pray, you are speaking to God.” St. Augustine is speaking here particularly about the scriptures. When we read these sacred texts, God is truly speaking to us. The scriptures are a perfect way to begin this sort of conversational prayer. We can read a passage and allow God’s own words to be a springboard into the conversation we have with him. That way we aren’t simply searching through the scriptures for an answer to a question we have. There is nothing particularly wrong with that approach, but it is so much simpler when we allow God to speak first and we respond. 

May the Lord free our minds and hearts to listen to him in his Word. Amen!

Two weeks ago, we had the opportunity to celebrate the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, better known as All Souls Day.  Though Catholics are familiar with the existence of All Souls Day, many who only who go to Mass once a week do not observe it liturgically since it only falls on a Sunday every handful of years, as it did this year.  Our wider exposure to this important celebration brought to our attention the Church’s beautiful, though often misunderstood, doctrine of Purgatory.

Over the next few paragraphs of Spe salvi¸ Pope Benedict offers some helpful theological considerations on this topic.  During this month of November, during which the Church invites us to have a special care for the souls in Purgatory by praying for them, it is fitting for us to have this as the topic for our consideration as this document on Christian hope comes to an end.  In paragraph 45, the Holy Father begins his reflections on Purgatory by acknowledging the belief by the Jewish people in an “intermediate state” between death and Resurrection.  This is seen especially in Jesus’s use of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, which we heard at the end of September for the 26^th Sunday in Ordinary Time.  The pope writes:

This early Jewish idea of an intermediate state includes the view that these souls are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man illustrates, are already being punished or are experiencing a provisional form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state can involve purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God. (SS 45)

He then explains how this Jewish belief was taken up by the early Church “and in the Western Church they gradually developed into the doctrine of Purgatory.” (ibid.) Not feeling it necessary to examine the complex historical development of this doctrine, the Holy Father offers a succinct explanation of what we believe regarding the judgment we all undergo at the moment of death, which will set up a more fruitful conversation about Purgatory:

With death, our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are. (ibid.)

The pope begins the next paragraph with this following important assessment: “Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life.” (SS 46) That paves the way for a consideration of Purgatory, to which we will return in two weeks.

I’ll invite you to use your imagination today!

Once upon a time there was a King – an old-style Medieval sort of King. Today, we see him leaving his castle, alone, on his horse, and travelling out through the surrounding towns and villages. He reaches a small dusty dirt path as the day nears its end and makes his way into thick woods. The path is somewhat overgrown, but he knows it. He has been here before. As he passes by a small stream and the miniature valley it creates, he sees a clearing ahead. Through a thicket of trees, the reddening sky appears, and he is in a grassy clearing. On one side is a wooden fence surrounding a small cabin. 

On the front of the cabin is an unusual door with no handle. Inside the fence, the King gets off his horse, goes up to that door and knocks on it. The owner of the cabin opens up the door and seemingly unsurprised, says, “My King, I was expecting you.” 

The last (and first) time the King came, this subject of the King was taken aback, and since the house was not clean or ready for the King, had not wanted him to come in. This new friend of the King was possibly the poorest of His subjects and was, therefore, somewhat embarrassed. The King had simply smiled and taken off a ring from his finger. He left that sign of royal dignity on the porch rail, promising to return.

The owner of the cabin now showed the King into a tidier house and they sat down, talked, and ate together. After they had eaten, the King’s subject brought the ring back to the King. “No, that was for you, my friend,” the King said. “I do not want it back. And that reminds me!” He quickly opened a bag he had been carrying. “I have more for you.” The King handed over a set of clothes he had brought from the palace, much finer than anything in the cabin. Speechless, there was no refusing the King.

The King would return in this way many times; each time bringing something for the cabin or for his new friend; each time deepening their friendship through conversation and his presence.

After some time in this way, we find the King travelling his route once again. He stops and meets his friend at the cabin. On coming inside, the King says to his friend, “I have nothing left of my possessions to give to you that you do not have. But I want you to come to be with me at the castle. I have chosen you to be my heir. As I have explained in the past, I have claimed you as a child of the royal family.” 

“But I know you still have work to do here, so you do not have to come now. Complete your work here. I will continue to visit. When your work is finished, come to the castle to receive your inheritance. Remember who you are.”

And you, Christian, remember who you are and remember whose you are. You have been claimed by a King, who comes repeatedly to give you his very life in Holy Communion. May that friendship grow ever deeper until the day of eternity dawns and we enter, God willing, the heavenly mansion of our King!

Now that we are in the month of November, the Church, especially in her liturgy, invites us to reflect on the Four Last Things:  death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell.  All of them are related, for when death comes for each of us, as it most certainly will, we will undergo a judgment.  At that judgment, known as the Particular Judgment, we will be evaluated based on love, whether we are in a position of loving God and our neighbor at that point when our earthly journey comes to an end.  For those who die in God’s friendship, having accepted His invitation to grace, they will be admitted into Heaven.  For those who have rejected that invitation, even in one’s final moment when the Lord pleads for them to accept His mercy, their final destination will be Hell.  Note that Purgatory is not listed among the Last Things, for there is no finality in Purgatory.  Purgatory is a place of transition where those who have died in friendship with Christ, before being admitted to Heaven, are purified from any remaining effects of sin not purged away through penance in this life.

There is also the Last Judgment, which the Catechism describes in these words:

The Last Judgment will come when Christ returns in glory. Only the Father knows the day and the hour; only he determines the moment of its coming. Then through his Son Jesus Christ he will pronounce the final word on all history. We shall know the ultimate meaning of the whole work of creation and of the entire economy of salvation and understand the marvellous ways by which his Providence led everything towards its final end. The Last Judgment will reveal that God’s justice triumphs over all the injustices committed by his creatures and that God’s love is stronger than death. (CCC 1040)

This description is a helpful companion to what Pope Benedict has been writing about in this last section of Spe salvi on judgment as a setting for learning hope.  the Holy Father writes in the next paragraph:

The image of the Last Judgement is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope; for us it may even be the decisive image of hope. Is it not also a frightening image? I would say: it is an image that evokes responsibility, an image, therefore, of that fear of which Saint Hilary spoke when he said that all our fear has its place in love. God is justice and creates justice. This is our consolation and our hope. And in his justice there is also grace. (SS 44)

I find the pope’s invitation to see how the image of the Last Judgment evokes a sense of responsibility to be helpful.  The judgment is related to justice in that justice is one receiving what is their due.  We take responsibility for our actions, for maintaining our relationship with the Lord, with how we live the commandment of loving our neighbor and working for a more just world.  At the same time, we know that we do not earn our salvation, for that is a pure gift, or grace, that the Lord gives to us.  That grace, however, is something we have the responsibility of accepting and living throughout our lives.  May we not fear the idea of judgment, but may we take it seriously, living intentionally to know, love, and serve God and our neighbor in this life, so that when this life comes to an end and we are judged on how we have loved, we may hope to be forever happy with God and all of the saints forever in Heaven.

Today, the church celebrates the dedication of the Basilica of the Lateran in Rome. While that church is very special and is one of the great wonders of Catholic Rome, today’s celebration is not simply focused on this particular church. Today, as we celebrate the dedication of the Lateran Basilica, we remember that the Church is not merely a building. 

To be fair, we are blessed with our church buildings – they are beautiful structures that are the house of God and a place for us to worship. This is the purpose of the Church building – to be a house for God and his people to gather, and to be a place to offer sacrifice.

The more fundamental “Church,” however, is “built of living stones” – it is the body of Christ made up of Jesus, our head, and us, his members. We thankfully have our beautiful buildings to properly worship God, but they aren’t “the Church.”  What happens in our worship of God in these buildings is the offering of Jesus Christ and our worship of the Father through Him, with Him, and in Him. At Mass, Jesus offers this worship to his heavenly father, and we are invited to participate in his offering. True worship is when we participate in the offering of Jesus from the depths of our hearts.

“You yourself,” St. Paul tells us, “are the temple of the living God.” You and I are God’s temple, and we are built upon Jesus Christ as our foundation. We share his Holy Spirit, and our hearts are living altars of sacrifice. We place our prayer intentions upon our hearts; we lift up every moment of our day upon the altar of our hearts. This is a very priestly thing to do, but it is not only for ordained priests to do. This is the job of every Christian, because we all share in the common priesthood of Jesus Christ. 

This idea of the altar of the heart in no way detracts from the necessary and saving action of Christ on the cross presented to us on the altar at Mass. In fact, it should serve, rather, to heighten our awareness of our ability to participate in Christ’s offering. At the offertory, the priest looks out and says to the people gathered together, “Pray brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the almighty Father.” The inclusion of those two words, “and yours,” is very intentional. We bring a sacrifice to the altar too, and we can place our own sacrifice, spiritually, upon the altar at Mass.

Therefore, to cultivate a habit of continually setting our lives upon the altars of our own hearts is a perfect preparation for weekly or daily Mass. This is simply another way of stating the age-old “offer it up!” As Saint Peter tells us, “…like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” As baptized Christians, we are this holy priesthood, and every moment of our life can be offered up as a spiritual sacrifice upon the altar of our hearts (in prayer), and then at the altar of the Mass (in union with Christ’s offering to the Father).

God receives this offering with great love, and he pours out blessings on our lives when we offer ourselves and our families to him. We give you today, O Jesus our king, all the trials, works, joys, and happiness of our daily life. We ask you to pour out your blessings upon all the members of our families, absent and present, living and dead. When one after another we will have fallen asleep in death, may all of us in heaven find our family reunited in your Sacred Heart. Amen. (this final prayer adapted from a prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus)

As Pope Benedict continues his reflection on the judgment as a setting for learning and practicing hope, he addresses the First Commandment, which says: “shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (Ex 20:3–4) He notes in particular the prohibition of any images which was basically idolatry.  In light of that prohibition, the Holy Father then writes: “God has given himself an ‘image’: in Christ who was made man. In him who was crucified, the denial of false images of God is taken to an extreme.” (SS 43) He then continues:

God now reveals his true face in the figure of the sufferer who shares man’s God-forsaken condition by taking it upon himself. This innocent sufferer has attained the certitude of hope: there is a God, and God can create justice in a way that we cannot conceive, yet we can begin to grasp it through faith. Yes, there is a resurrection of the flesh. There is justice. There is an “undoing” of past suffering, a reparation that sets things aright. (ibid.)

Because of Christ’s Resurrection, we are able to look at the world through different eyes, especially when we are faced with so many examples of suffering and injustice.  From a purely human perspective, those examples seem too much to overcome, that there is no way that all of these can be set aright.  The Holy Father explains that because of Christ’s Resurrection and the upcoming Last Judgment, the injustices of history do not have the final word.  Rather, we can turn to the Word of God Himself as He speaks about the Final Judgment as recorded in the final chapter of the Book of Revelation: “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, to repay every one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Rev 22:12–13) It is this final end and in this final promise that we place our hope, and with that, we can say in faith: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20)

As a reminder, the month of November is a time when we pray especially for the Poor Souls in Purgatory, who are assured of the hope of eternal life in Heaven and who rely on our prayers to help them to realize that hope.  A plenary indulgence for the Poor Souls is available from November 1-8 when we visit any cemetery and pray for them.  A plenary indulgence also requires that the person have the interior disposition of complete detachment from sin, that they sacramentally confess their sins, that they receive Holy Communion, and that they pray for the intentions of the Holy Father.  Regarding these conditions, the Church has clarified:

It is appropriate, but not necessary, that the sacramental Confession and especially Holy Communion and the prayer for the Pope’s intentions take place on the same day that the indulgenced work is performed; but it is sufficient that these sacred rites and prayers be carried out within several days (about 20) before or after the indulgenced act. Prayer for the Pope’s intentions is left to the choice of the faithful, but an “Our Father” and a “Hail Mary” are suggested. One sacramental Confession suffices for several plenary indulgences, but a separate Holy Communion and a separate prayer for the Holy Father’s intentions are required for each plenary indulgence.  (cf. Apostolic Penitentiary, Prot. N. 39/05/I)

I think most people answering that question would do a quick Google search and find that there are about 2.5 billion Christians around the world, around 1.4 billion of which are Catholic. That would be a good answer, and even those numbers are staggering. Still, that answer would be technically and truthfully incomplete. 

What is the Church? As St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (12:27). The Church then, is most basically the body of Christ – those human beings who have been joined to him by the saving grace of Baptism, the infusion of the Holy Spirit, and the bond of Charity. This unity is far deeper than the unity of a club or social organization, though it is more distinct than the unity of the parts of a physical body. As members of the Church, we make up a mystical body of Christ.

It is true, therefore, that all 2.5 billion Christians on earth are in some way tied to this body, at various levels of “attachment.” As Catholics, we joyfully believe that we possess all the sacramental means of remaining rooted in this body, as well as the fulness of the Truth that Jesus desires to light our way as members of his body. The body, however, is even bigger than this!

In fact, the Church has always maintained that our “membership” with the body is not ended after death. Heaven itself can simply be seen as an ultimate and perfected union with Christ’s body. All those in Purgatory too, those who will be in heaven but are in need of further purification after death, are members of this body. 

If this is true (and it is!), then the answer to that question, “How many people are in the Church?” is a number far higher than we can count. Every human being who has died in the grace of God now lives as a member of Christ’s body in eternal life.

Yesterday, the Church celebrated the feast of All Saints, on which we remember all those who are currently in Heaven. We recognize our unity with them still and our ability to relate to them, speak to them, and rely on their prayers for us. They are perfectly united with Jesus and await our ever deeper union with them during our lives on Earth and one day in Heaven with them.

Today, the Church celebrates the feast of All Souls, on which we remember all those who have died in God’s grace but are still being purified. They joyfully suffer this purification as their souls near the eternal rest of Heaven. We recognize our unity with them still and our ability to pray for them. 

A couple weeks ago I explained that St. Augustine taught that we, the body, are all one with Christ our Head. He called this unity the totus Christus – “the whole Christ.” We see through today’s teaching that this totus Christus includes not only all those members of the earthly pilgrim Church, but also the suffering Church of Purgatory, and the triumphant Church of Heaven. We are one body, one Church, united in Christ. We pray for one another, we speak to one another, and we await a true and lasting union in Heaven with our Head, Jesus Christ. 

The proper response to the magnitude of this reality is wonder and awe! I pray that you only grow to appreciate this unity more and more. God bless you on this All Souls Day.