All Saints and All Souls

As we celebrate the feasts of All Saints and All Souls this week, I am reminded how thankful I am that our Catholic faith teaches us that our loved ones who have gone before us now have a special role to pray for and intercede for us still here on Earth. We not only have friends and family in this world, but in the next as well, and it is a blessing to consider that so many people we have loved and known are now members of the Communion of Saints.

         I have had non-Catholic friends or family caution about the dangers of praying to anyone other than God and I think it’s important to remember that we don’t pray to anyone other than God either. We ask the saints (or our deceased loved ones) to pray for us, just as we would ask our earthly friends to say a prayer for us in a time of need. It is a gift to have friends in heaven!

         My favorite saint is St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and a particular devotion I learned from her, is to ask our deceased relatives and friends to pray for us in the same way that we seek the intercession of the formally canonized saints. St. Thérèse had four siblings who died before age 5, and in her writings she shares how she would pour out her heart to her little brothers and sisters in heaven and ask them to pray for her. I was really touched by her simple trust in her very young siblings, that she knew they were in heaven and had the power to pray for her just as the great Saints and Doctors of the Church could.

So this week, as we honor all the saints, known and unknown, I invite you to think of a heavenly friend or family member, that you may not have considered praying to before, and ask them to provide you with guidance and spiritual support, as they now sit at the feet of God.

A Prayer for All Saints… 

Dear God, thank you for the example of the Saints. I desire to join in their company, worshiping you forever in Heaven. Please help me follow their footsteps, and yours, Jesus Christ. Please help me to conform myself to Your image, seeking Your will in all things, as the Saints did.  Please help me to devote myself, and all that I do, to Your glory, and to the service of my neighbors. 

Amen.

-Shay  McKinley