Mass Schedule
October 31
5:30 pm
November 1
6:30 am, 8:15 am, 12:10 pm and 7:00 pm
On the Solemnity of All Saints the Church celebrates all the saints: canonized or beatified, and the multitude of those who are in heaven enjoying the beatific vision that are only known to God. "This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity—this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed—is called "heaven." Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness" (CCC 1024). During the early centuries the Saints venerated by the Church were all martyrs. The origin of the festival of All Saints celebrated in the West dates to May 13, 609 or 610, when Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs; the feast of the dedicatio Sanctae Mariae ad Martyres has been celebrated at Rome ever since. Later Pope Gregory III set November 1 as the day for commemorating all the Saints.
The feast of All Saints should inspire us with tremendous hope. Among the saints in heaven are some whom we have known. All lived on earth lives like our own. They were baptized, marked with the sign of faith, they were faithful to Christ's teaching and they have gone before us to the heavenly home whence they call on us to follow them. The Gospel of the Beatitudes, read today, while it shows their happiness, shows, too, the road that they followed; there is no other that will lead us whither they have gone.
Together with the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed on November 2, the Church celebrates our belief in the Communion of Saints – those who are with God in heaven, our brothers and sisters who have died marked with the sign of faith who are on their way to heaven (particularly, the souls in purgatory) and the church on earth.
