The Roman Catholic Church designates November 1 as All Saints’ Day and November 2 as All Souls’ Day. Every year these feast days have raised unanswered questions in my mind. Were you born into Roman Catholicism? If so, you may know the answers to my questions (or not!). Were you, like me, a convert to Catholicism? If so, did your preparation for conversion involve so much to learn and digest that you never got around to learning about saints and souls? Have you escaped Roman Catholicism? If so, do you know as little as I did
about All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day? In any of these cases, are you up to digging into this a bit?
In Saints, I learned that saints are the spiritual component of every human who has achieved heaven. As such, we create saints of ourselves by preparing ourselves sufficiently that we are judged ready for eternal life in heaven. Few of us succeed in achieving heaven at our deaths because of the stringency of The Greatest Commandment Yardstick. The Roman Catholic Church attempts to identify a few of those who succeed through a process called Canonization. However, canonization is not a condition of sainthood.. Everyone in heaven is a saint whether or not they have been canonized. Which brings us to All Saints' Day and All Souls’ Day.
All Saints’ Day is an occasion for Christians to pray to the saints in heaven. All Souls’ Day (and the whole month of November) is set aside for Christians to pray for the souls who remain in Purgatory until they have been judged ready for heaven. On the former feast day, we are encouraged to pray to all the saints to help all of us prepare ourselves for heaven. On the latter feast day (and throughout the rest of November), we are encouraged to pray for the souls still in purgatory.
Of course, everything you have read in this post is based on faith alone. We cannot experience heaven or its saints. No one has ever returned from heaven to confirm all this. As a result, my skepticism kept me from observing these holy days. However, I have come to an understanding that, even though I can’t know if saints exist, I can know whether it is more likely than not that they do.
How can I know this? I can know it based on what else I know. In the Meaning of Life Video Series and in Chapter 13 of Discovering Life’s Purpose, we establish, through sound and unrefuted reasoning, that God created everything (including us humans), loves us, invites us to eternal intimacy with Him in heaven and established the purpose of our earthly lives as being to prepare ourselves to accept His invitation. If you were to click on the first of the two links above, and discover that the sound reasoning the video series outlines is irrefutable, you, too, could know that it is more likely than not that saints exist in heaven and that souls exist in all of us. So, what should I do on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day?
It's really pretty simple, is it not? After all, the sound reasoning we have just referenced, determines that what we call saints have an intimate relationship with God. Must they not, then, be effective agents to whom to pray for God's enablement of our achievement of sainthood? Similarly, because I pray for God's enablement of those close to me while they are alive, should I not pray for that same enablement for their souls after they have passed away? Must I not resolve to not miss another All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day?
Del H. Smith conducts research into life’s meaning and is the award-winning author
of the Amazon Best Seller, Discovering Life’s Purpose.