Dear Friends,
In a few days, we enter some very important events in the church’s calendar.
All Saints Day is this Friday (November 1), a Holy Day of Obligation. We have three Masses that day: 8 am, 12:10 pm and 7:30 pm, so that we can attend any Mass at our convenience. The Bible reminds us that the number of those saved are “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue.” (Revelation 7:9). This includes the canonized saints whose number keeps on increasing. Pope Francis canonized 14 new saints just last Sunday (October 20). They are:
- Manuel Ruiz López and Seven Companions of the Order of Friars Minor, and Francis Mooti and Raphael Massabki, lay faithful, martyrs.
- Joseph Allamano, priest, Founder of the Institutes of Men Missionaries of the Consolata and Women Missionaries of the Consolata.
- Marie-Léonie Paradis (born Virginia Alodie), Foundress of the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family.
- Elena Guerra, Foundress of the Congregation of the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, known as the “Sisters of Saint Zita.”
- Carlo Acutis, the modern teen web designer who had special devotion to the Eucharist.
Among the newly canonized saints is St. Giuseppe Allamano (1851–1926), an Italian diocesan priest who founded the Consolata Missionary Priests and Sisters. Allamano, though he spent his entire life in Italy, left a global legacy by training missionaries who carried the Gospel to remote corners of Africa, Asia, and South America. We, here at St. Matthias, have a special connection to the Consolata Missionaries as the Consolata priests have been a great help to us for many years and still continue to be whenever they are available to minister to us. In the name of us all, I congratulate them for this great honor of their founder’s canonization.
All Souls Day is on Saturday (November 2). Though not a Holy Day of Obligation, we will have a Holy Mass at 8 am. A separate Mass to commemorate all those who passed away this year will be held on Sunday evening (November 3) at 5:30 pm.
We know that November is dedicated to the departed souls. At all the Masses this weekend, we are remembering in prayer all our dearly departed ones. Explaining the true concept of Purgatory as an “existential state” and not a place, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote that it is “the fringe of heaven, a state where heaven’s eternal light has a refining effect on the “holy souls” (not ‘poor souls’), who are held in the arms of Divine Mercy.”
The doctrine of “Communion of saints” that we profess every Sunday is a happy reminder to us of all those who are gone to God. Pope Francis calls it a “spiritual connection that exists between those who continue their pilgrimage on earth and those who have passed the threshold of death into eternity.” So let us happily depend on their intercessions for us even as we remember them with gratitude in our prayers especially during the Holy Eucharist. This is one reason why we give a ‘Mass Card’ to those who are grieving the loss of a family member or arrange for Masses to be offered on the anniversary of our dear departed ones.
Your brother in Christ,
Fr. Abraham Orapankal