OCR Text |
Show All Saints All Souls. STURDAY, November 1, the church commemorates the feast of All Saints. The day is a holy day of obligation. Each day of the year is set apart to honor the memory of one or other of the saints who devoted their lives to the service of God. Like a nation that wishes always to honor her dead heroes, the church, in honoring her children who practiced heroic virtues, holds them up as objects of emulation. But the number who have for the past twenty centuries earned the celestial crown is countless. The apostles were followed by thousands of martyrs, confessors con-fessors and virgins who either laid down their lives for the faith of . Christ or devoted them to its propagation. That none may be excluded from the honor which they earned, one day Is set apart each yea"r in which the good works and virtues of all are recalled to the memory of those who are traveling trav-eling the rugged path of life over which the saints passed to reach the glory of the kingdom. The first of November No-vember is the day set apart for that feast. Monday is the feast of All Souls. On this day the church puts on its raiment of sorrow, so that in such garb the mind may be quickened to pleading, to prayer for the repose of departed souls. Ah! what is a soul? The most precious gift which God endowed man because it lives eternally and was created cre-ated to praise and glorify God forever. Where is that soul? Perhaps with its maker. We know not. Perhaps enduring en-during the fire that purges it of sftfin. We know not. But this we do know, that "it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed of their sins." So on this day we unite in sending up petitions peti-tions for our own kith and kin, the while we are admonished that the souls of others are appealing to us: "Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, at least you my friends, for the hand of the Lord hath'toucheti me." Hell has been thwarted and its demons, de-mons, too; but the last farthing, jot and tittle must languish until cleansed and saved so as by fire. |