Homily for All Souls Day

Homily for All Souls Day

Nov. 2, 2025
John 6: 37-40
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

Christus Consolator (Carl Bloch)

“This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life” (Jn 6: 40).

You’ve probably heard someone say that if he or she ever showed up in church, the roof would fall in.  Regardless of their intent, that thought expresses a reverence for the supreme holiness of God.

If you saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, you remember its ending, in which the bad guys dare to open the ark of the covenant, and having exposed themselves to the very presence of God, disintegrate.  No one unclean may stand in God’s presence.

That is the root of our belief—it’s Catholic doctrine from the most ancient days of our faith—that people must be cleansed or purified, before they may stand before God.  That cleansing is purgatory.  During that cleansing, these souls are holy inasmuch as they possess a fundamental love for God, a basic relationship with Christ.  When someone has been entirely purified of the filth of sin—of pride, lust, selfishness, greed, desire for vengeance, etc.—then one comes to eternal life.

Obviously, we don’t know how God effects that cleansing.  If it’s by fire, as we sometimes imagine, it must be the fire of divine love blazing from the heart of Jesus. 

The Divine Mercy

However the holy souls are purified, it’s an expression of God’s compassion for us.  Christ makes it happen.  It’s God’s will that everyone be saved—everyone, or as Pope Francis used to say, “Todos, todos, todos!”—saved thru union with Christ, raised from the dead and living forever.  That’s God’s hearty desire for all of us.

We pray for the dead—our deceased relatives, friends, fellow parishioners, victims of hurricanes and other disasters, victims of war and other forms of violence—because by God’s grace our prayers can help them.  We pray that their union with Christ may come to its fullness, that their purification may be completed, their love of God perfected, so that they may be worthy to come into God’s holy presence and stay there forever as his beloved children.  “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come” was the psalmist’s prayer (23:6), and it’s our prayer for the departed, whether they followed Christ explicitly or only implicitly by trying to live in goodness, truth, and mercy.

In the Apostles’ Creed, we profess our belief in the communion of saints.  We’re linked to all God’s holy ones by our union with Christ; linked to the saints in heaven, whom we celebrated yesterday, and to the saints in purgatory, for they are indeed saved by the blood of Christ and are assured of reaching heaven when their cleansing has been completed. 

And both the saints and those still being purified pray for us, their comrades in Christ.  May their prayers help us on our journey toward heaven.  May our prayers glorify God thru his saints and help those still being perfected in purgatory.