All Saints and All Souls

The feasts of All Saints and All Souls usually pass by for me with the obligatory Mass attendance, prayer and thoughts about my grandparents, but I don't tend to really dwell on them or feel the shift of internal tectonic plates as they pass. This year, however, I was really struck by the power of these two beautiful feast days – the knowledge that every person who has gone to heaven is part of the same organism as little old me, and that I could ask that many holy people to pray for me, my family, the world, all at once is both mind-boggling and beautiful.

The idea of this web of connectivity (and if you think about existence outside of time, we are all potentially saints right now, even as we also muddle along trying to get it right here on earth) is both comforting (we're not alone in our struggles) and challenging (so much to live up to!).

Came across two great quotes on these feast days:

Feast of All Saints (Via CatholicGreetings.org)

The challenge of sainthood
is to go
where love takes me.

—Prayer for Daybreak and Day's End, Volume II

Feast of All Souls (Via the AmericanCatholic.org Saint of the Day newsletter)

“We must not make purgatory into a flaming concentration camp on the brink of hell—or even a ‘hell for a short time.’ It is blasphemous to think of it as a place where a petty God exacts the last pound—or ounce—of flesh.... St. Catherine of Genoa, a mystic of the 15th century, wrote that the ‘fire’ of purgatory is God’s love ‘burning’ the soul so that, at last, the soul is wholly aflame. It is the pain of wanting to be made totally worthy of One who is seen as infinitely lovable, the pain of desire for union that is now absolutely assured, but not yet fully tasted” (Leonard Foley, O.F.M., Believing in Jesus).