Msgr. Roger J. Landry
The Anchor
Editorial
November 7, 2025
Throughout the month of November, Catholics aim with special dedication to fulfill the sweetest of the spiritual works of mercy, which is to pray for our beloved dead. We do so of course on Nov. 2, the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (All Souls Day), which this year happily falls on a Sunday. The Church remembers our beloved dead not just on this day, however, but makes suffrage for them throughout the year, and with special fervor in November.
We pray for the dead because we know in faith three truths: first, that contrary to the popular — and dangerous —presumption that everyone who dies automatically goes to a “better place,” the Catholic faith does not believe everyone who dies goes to heaven, especially immediately; second, that the dead may need our help; and, third, that our prayers and sacrifices can indeed help them.
With regard to the first two truths, the Church teaches that to enter heaven, one must be completely attached to God and radically detached from sin and everything not of God. “Nothing unclean shall enter heaven,” the Book of Revelation affirms (21:27). There are many who do not live and die with this purified of holiness of life and hence they need to be decontaminated to enter into the kingdom in which God is all in all. This state in which the dead are sanitized from all sin and worldliness has been traditionally called by the Church “Purgatory,” from the Latin term purgare, which means “to cleanse.” Pope Benedict in his encyclical on Christian hope posited that the “great majority of people” die in need of such cleansing and therefore go to Purgatory. With hope, we pray for them, because in faith we believe that our prayers can in fact help them in this process of purification.
In the Second Book of Maccabees, written about 140 years before Christ’s birth, we see that that the Jewish people offered sacrifices in the temple for slain Jewish soldiers who had betrayed the Lord by carrying underneath their garments various idols captured from their pagan adversaries. “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they might be loosed from their sins,” we’re told (2 Macc 12:45). Continuing the tradition of faithful Jews, the Church has likewise prayed for people to be cleansed of their venial sins. We never know if our beloved dead might have been hiding some sins out of fear or weakness, and we are able to do something far more valuable for them than what was possible for the ancient Maccabeans. We can pray for them during Mass.
“From the beginning,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us, “the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God” (1032). There’s no greater prayer we can offer for the dead than the Mass, in which we unite our own personal petitions to Christ’s own saving sacrifice offered once-and-for-all during the Last Supper and on the Cross.
“Church tradition has always urged prayer for the dead, in particular by offering the celebration of the Eucharist for them,” Pope Francis said in an Angelus meditation on All Souls Day 2014. “It is the best spiritual help we can give to their souls, particularly to the most abandoned ones. The foundation of prayers in suffrage of souls is in the communion of the Mystical Body,” and that communion is expressed most powerfully at Mass.
The Church has venerated for centuries this practice of praying for the dead at Mass. In the Eucharistic prayers, we intercede for all those “who have gone before us with the sign of faith” (Eucharistic Prayer I), “who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection and all who have died in your mercy (II), “who were pleasing to you [God] at their passing from this life” (III) and for “whose faith you [God] alone have known” (IV).
In a special way, for over a thousand years, Catholics have also asked priests to offer Mass for the eternal repose of the soul of specific people who have died. It’s important to understand theologically what’s involved in offering in this practice. Because the sacrifice of the Mass is the re-presentation of Christ’s saving prayer from the Upper Room and Calvary, we know that its fruits benefit the whole Church universally. There are special graces as well for those who are present and participate in the Mass, in contrast to those who do not attend. But there is also a ministerial or personal fruit of the Mass that the priest may seek to apply to a specific person or purpose, like the intention requested by a member of the faithful, who devoutly asks the priest in charity to offer the Mass with that intention in mind.
It is customary for a member of the faithful voluntarily to give something to the priest celebrating Mass for that intention. This is often called a “Mass stipend.” Throughout the centuries this offering was understood as an alm given to the priest in gratitude for his taking on the commitment of praying for that particular intention in lieu of others. Generally small — today in the United States it is normally $10 — it was often the only financial income a priest might receive for his upkeep and for the care of the poor entrusted to him.
In many missionary dioceses and territories today, it is still the only income a priest receives, if he is fortunate enough to receive such offerings, normally from abroad. Bishops in missionary territories often have to take on the role of mendicants begging for Mass stipends for the support of their clergy from national and diocesan offices of The Society of the Propagation of the Faith, Aid to the Church in Need, or other trusted, global pontifical organs.
The availability of priests and bishops in the missions to celebrate Masses is normally a big help to vibrant American parishes, where there are nowhere near as many Sunday and daily Masses in the parish to meet the demand of parishioners requesting a Mass offering for their deceased loved ones, and where the wait for an announced Mass can often be a year or more. This is the “nice problem” many of the Portuguese parishes in the Diocese of Fall River confront. Hence, pastors, bishops and many of the faithful turn toward the missions, conscious that Mass is just as valuable for their loved ones when celebrated by a priest at a missionary substation in the jungle.
It’s possible for lay faithful to request Masses celebrated by missionary priests through the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, whether individual Masses, or novenas, or even Gregorian Masses, which is a tradition going back to Pope St. Gregory the Great, who arranged to celebrate Masses on 30 consecutive days for a deceased monk, Justus, from the monastery Gregory had founded in Rome. Justus was posthumously discovered to have sinned scandalously against the rule of poverty. At the end of the 30 consecutive daily Masses, Justus appeared in a dream to a fellow monk announcing that he had been mercifully purified of his sins and had entered eternal joy with God. Because of their Mass commitments in their respective Churches, it’s practically impossible for parish priests in the United States to celebrate such Gregorian Masses, but priests in the missions can and are very grateful to receive them.
In this month in which the Church focuses even more on praying for our beloved dead, it’s an opportunity to continue the focus of World Mission Month and with solidarity solicit the help of hard-working priests in missionary territories to assist in these acts of ongoing devotion and care for our loved ones after death.