All Souls' Day

History

Christians were praying for their dead long before any calendar fixed a day for it. Vatican News points to evidence from the second century that Christians prayed and celebrated the Eucharist for their beloved dead, at first on the third day after burial and then on the anniversary, and later on the seventh and thirtieth days after a death.

The November 2 date comes from one abbot and one monastery. "Remembering the dead on the 2 November became official in the year 998 when Abbot Odilo of Cluny (994-1048) made it obligatory in all the monasteries subject to him," Vatican News states. Cluny's network of houses was large, and the observance spread outward from it.

The doctrine underneath the day is purgatory. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that those who die in God's grace and friendship but still imperfectly purified "undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven" (1030), gives that final purification the name Purgatory (1031), and grounds the practice of prayer for the dead in scripture, quoting 2 Maccabees 12:46 (1032). The same paragraph commends almsgiving, indulgences and works of penance on behalf of the dead.

Two later decisions shaped how the day is kept. In 1915, Pope Benedict XV granted priests permission to celebrate several Masses on November 2. And in the Table of Liturgical Days attached to the Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year, the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed sits in the first and highest group, above the Sundays of Christmas Time and Ordinary Time in the second. Because the norms say the highest-ranked celebration is the one observed, a November 2 falling on an ordinary Sunday is kept as All Souls' Day.

How to observe

For Catholics the plain observance is one of the day's Masses, and the day gives a parish unusual room: the 1915 permission lets a priest celebrate several Masses, so the schedule may be fuller than a normal weekday. Many parishes also keep a book or a list of the dead through November, and adding a name to it takes a minute and tends to be the part people remember doing years later.

Visiting a grave is the older custom and needs no liturgy at all. Where the graves are too far to reach, the substitute that holds up is writing the names out by hand rather than thinking them.

The three Catechism paragraphs that carry the whole doctrine, 1030 through 1032, take two minutes to read and are more specific than most summaries of them.