A Brief History of All Souls' Day - New Evangelizers

Happy Feast Day!  As you are all probably aware, today we are commemorating All Souls’ Day, the companion celebration to yesterday’s Feast of All Saints.  Celebrating the legacy of all our saints makes sense, but how did it come to be companioned with All Souls’ Day and how is All Souls’ different?

I have found the Collegeville liturgical references to be extremely helpful in sorting out these types of questions.  To summarize briefly, the saying of prayers for the dead reaches far back into antiquity, with each culture having its own prayers and ways of commemorating and honoring their deceased loved ones.

As more and more people became Christian, these prayers changed and were adapted to Christian beliefs. St Cyril of Jerusalem and St. John Chrysostom, writing in the 300s, were among the first to mention formal prayers for the deceased family members.

By the ninth century, the idea for a day of prayer for all the dead began to develop.  St. Odilo, the fifth abbot of Cluny, originally designated a day on which to commemorate the dead of his order, and this naturally led to commemorating and praying for all the dead.  St. Odilo was the first to officially celebrate this day of prayer on November 2, 998.  He linked it to the feast of All Saints where God is thanked for the saints, we meditate on their lives and lessons, and ask for their intercession.  Pope Sylvester II approved the feast, and its celebration spread through the whole Church.

Praying for the dead is a worthy, time-honored tradition.  If your parish celebrates the Saturday liturgy in the morning, be sure to attend to pray for those friends and family members who have gone before you.  Then, at home, it might bring deeper meaning to the feast if each member of the family took turns sharing happy memories of someone who has died and expressing gratitude to God for the blessings bestowed on the family through that person. At the end of the sharing, close with a family recitation of the Divine Mercy Chaplet for all those you have mentioned and for all the dead.

What better gift could we give our loved ones than to ask that they be held in the ocean of God’s fathomless mercy?

Reference: Days of The Lord:  The Liturgical Year, Volume 7 Solemnities and Feasts (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 1994), Pgs. 252-257

Copyright © 2013, Carol Ann Chybowski

Carol Ann Chybowski

Carol Ann Chybowski is a long time member of the Catholic Writers Guild. She has published book reviews at various websites and appears in two volumes of A Community of Voices: An Anthology of Santa Barbara. When not busy about her parish, Carol Ann can be found knitting, gardening, or on horseback.