Dear Brothers and Sisters:
With All Souls’ Day coming up we may wonder, Why do we pray for the dead?” Francis Hall explains in Dogmatic Theology (Vol. X),
“Praying for the departed was a widespread custom among ancient gentilic peoples; and the custom is abundantly justified by the principle whatever we may rightly desire we may also pray for, and by the consideration that the assurance at death of a soul’s final beatification does not eliminate from its intermediate state the contingencies of progress which afford occasions for prayer…To pray for each other is the most effective method and support of the communion of saints, and if the barrier of death does not, surely it does not, break the mystical bond between the living and the departed, the living should pray for the departed.”
Faithfully yours
Fr. Rick Gregory
The Collect for All Souls’ Day
O GOD, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful: grant unto the souls of thy servants and handmaids the remission of all their sins; that through devout supplications they may obtain the pardon they have always desired. Who with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, livest and reignest God, world without end. Amen.