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All Souls’ vs. All Saints’ – What’s the Difference?

The Feast of All Saints’ Day celebrates all the saints: canonized or beatified, as well as the multitude of those who are in heaven enjoying the beatific vision that are only known to God alone.

During the early centuries the Saints venerated by the Church were all martyrs. Later on the Popes set November 1 as the day for commemorating all the Saints. We all have this “universal call to holiness.” What must we to do in order to join the company of the saints in heaven? We “must follow in His footsteps and conform [our]selves to His image seeking the will of the Father in all things. [We] must devote [our]selves with all [our] being to the glory of God and the service of [our] neighbor. In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in Church history” (Lumen Gentium, 40).

All Saints’ Day is a Holy Day of Obligation. Please Join us for Mass.
Tuesday, November 1
7:00AM | 8:00AM | 12:00PM | 7:00PM

All Souls’ Day is a holy day set aside for honoring and praying for the dead. Unlike All Saints’ Day which celebrates those souls that are already in heaven, All Souls’ Day is a time of prayer for our departed who may be undergoing their final purification in preparation to see God face-to-face.

If we die in a state of grace, free from mortal sin, we are destined for heaven. But the Scriptures tell us that “nothing unclean can enter heaven” (Rev 21:27). Sometimes when we die, we may not completely clean from our attachments of this world. We may need God to perform a final scrubbing. This is the work of Jesus’s cross. Catholics understand this final state of purification, being refined by the “fire” of God’s love, as “Purgatory.”

As Catholics we pray for our departed loved ones and offer Masses for them that the grace of Christ’s cross may deliver them from any final attachments they might have had and bring them, unstained, into the glory of heaven.

All Are invited to join us for Mass on All Souls’ Day.
Wednesday, November 2
7:00AM | Noon | 7:00PM