Today is the Octave Day of All Saints, the last day to receive a plenary indulgence applicable to the Poor Souls for those who have met the necessary conditions and who visit a cemetery to pray for the faithful departed. ➕
“Strangers as we are and pilgrims on the earth, let us fix our hearts and our thoughts on the day which will give to each of us a home, and restore us to Paradise.
Who, that is on a voyage, would not hasten to return to his country!
Who, that is on the way home, would not eagerly desire a favourable wind, that he might the sooner embrace his dear ones!
Parents, brothers, children, friends in multitudes impatiently await us in our heavenly fatherland; blessed crowd already secure of their own eternal happiness, they are solicitous about our salvation. What joy for them and for us, when at length we see them and they may embrace us!
How great the delight of that heavenly kingdom: no more fear of death; but eternal and supreme happiness!
Let all our earnest desires tend to this: that we may be united with the Saints, that together with them we may possess Christ.
These enthusiastic words, borrowed from St. Cyprian’s beautiful book “On Mortality,” are used by the Church in her second Nocturn; and in the third she gives us the strong language of St. Augustine, consoling the faithful, who are obliged still to remain in exile, by reminding them of the great beatitude of this earth : the beatitude of those who are persecuted and cursed by the world. To suffer gladly for Christ, is the Christian’s glory, the invisible beauty which wins for his soul the good pleasure of God, and procures him a great reward in heaven.” #domprospergueranger
Four Crowned Martyrs (11.8), orate pro nobis.
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