Homily for All Souls’ Day

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

During this month of November, the Church invites us to reflect on what are called the “last things: ”death, judgment, heaven, and hell. This branch of theology is known as eschatology, the study of death and eternal life.

We ask the question, perhaps the most important question, the one that gives direction and urgency to our lives: What happens to us when we die?

Our faith teaches that when we die, we will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And it doesn’t matter what our faith background is whether a person is Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, LDS, atheist, agnostic, or Christian; all of us will stand before the same Lord and Judge.

St. Faustina wrote in her Diary that she was shown her judgment in advance:

Once I was summoned to the judgment of God. I stood alone before the Lord. Jesus appeared such as we know Him during His Passion. After a moment, His wounds disappeared except for five, those in His hands, His feet and His side. Suddenly I saw the complete condition of my soul as God sees it. I could clearly see all that is displeasing to God. I did not know that even smallest transgressions will have to be accounted for. What a moment! Who can describe it? To stand before the Thrice-Holy God!

— Diary of St. Faustina, §36

After that judgment, three destinies await the soul: hell for those who reject God, heaven for those who die in perfect friendship with Him, and Purgatory for those who still need purification before entering into eternal glory.

Our goal, of course, ought not be merely to “just make it.” We should not aim for the edge of Purgatory, hanging on by our fingernails, but for heaven itself, for the fullness of love. St. Faustina’s vision reminds us that even the smallest transgressions will have to be accounted for.

Only perfect love can see God face to face, and so Purgatory is that merciful process of purification and healing by which imperfect souls are made perfect in love.

Pope Benedict XVI described this purification beautifully:

“It is the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God… Man is the recipient of divine mercy, yet this does not exonerate him from the need to be transformed. Encounter with the Lord is this transformation — it is the fire that burns away our dross and reforms us to be vessels of eternal joy.”

— Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (pp. 230–231)

Today’s commemoration of All Souls springs from this belief in Purgatory, that God, in His mercy, continues His work of sanctifying love beyond the grave.

The souls in Purgatory experience pain — not from despair, but from love unfulfilled. They long for the face of God, whom they love perfectly now, but must still await. St. Frances of Rome called Purgatory a “sojourn of hope.” St. Catherine of Genoa said the souls there experience a joy that grows as they are purified.

Our Lady herself, according to the saints, visits the souls in Purgatory, bringing consolation and even release on feast days. And we, on earth, can help them — through prayer, sacrifice, indulgences, and above all the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Each Mass offered for the dead is a profound act of mercy, uniting the sufferings of the faithful departed to the saving Passion of Christ.

As we pray for the souls of the departed, we are also reminded to show reverence to their bodies. The Church teaches that the human body shares in the dignity of the person, for it was a temple of the Holy Spirit and will one day rise again.

The bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurrection. The burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy.

— Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2300

From the earliest days, Christians have laid their dead to rest with prayer and reverence, often near the Eucharist, as a sign of faith in the Resurrection.

The Church allows cremation, provided that it is not chosen as a denial of belief in the Resurrection (CCC 2301). The ashes must be kept together and placed in a sacred place: a cemetery, mausoleum, or columbarium, not scattered, divided among family members, or kept at home ... and not made in jewelry.

The Vatican’s 2016 instruction Ad Resurgendum cum Christo (To Rise with Christ) states clearly:

The conservation of the ashes of the departed in a sacred place ensures that they are not excluded from the prayers and remembrance of the Christian community.

This is because the way we treat the body, even in death, proclaims our faith in what we believe God will do: raise that body in glory on the Last Day.

In recent years, several new methods of “body disposition” have been developed and promoted as environmentally friendly alternatives to burial or cremation. While often well-intentioned, many of these are not compatible with the Catholic understanding of the body and the Resurrection.

1. Human Composting (Natural Organic Reduction)

This process places the body in a vessel filled with wood chips, straw, or alfalfa, and allows microbes to decompose it into soil over a few weeks. The resulting compost is returned to the family or used in gardens.

Although presented as “green,” this method treats the human body as organic waste to be recycled, rather than as a sacred vessel awaiting resurrection.

2. Aquamation (Alkaline Hydrolysis or “Water Cremation”)

In this method, the body is placed in a pressurized steel chamber filled with water and an alkaline solution. Over several hours, the soft tissue dissolves completely, leaving only bone fragments.

Those bones are dried and processed into ashes — but the liquid residue, often over 100 gallons, is typically drained into the sewer system as wastewater.

The U.S. bishops have stated that this process does not show sufficient respect for the body, since the greater part of the remains is literally washed away, leaving little that can be reverently interred in a sacred place.

3. Promession

This experimental process involves freezing the body with liquid nitrogen, vibrating it into powder, removing metals, and burying the resulting powder in shallow soil for rapid decomposition. While not yet widely practiced, it too risks reducing the body to a mere by-product of a technical procedure, detached from any sacred or symbolic meaning.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in its 2023 statement On the Proper Disposition of Bodily Remains, reminds us that these new methods “fail to manifest the respect for the bodies of the dead that the Church requires.”

The Church insists that the body, whether intact or cremated, must be laid to rest in a sacred place, accompanied by prayer, as a sign of faith in the resurrection of the body.

To dispose of the body as material, or to dissolve it into liquid or soil, is inconsistent with that faith. The Christian response to death is never to “process” or “recycle” a body, but to entrust it to the earth in hope.

As Pope Francis has said, “The burial of the dead is an act of mercy and an expression of faith in the resurrection.”

Conclusion: A Witness to Hope

So as we pray for the souls in Purgatory, we also bear witness, in the way we treat the dead, to our belief that death does not have the final word.

Every act of reverence toward the body, every Mass offered, every prayer for the dead, every visit to the cemetery, every indulgence gained — all of these proclaim that we are people of the Resurrection.

We are called not only to live as saints, but to die as believers... leaving behind a testimony of faith that our bodies, like Christ’s, will rise in glory.

During these first eight days of November, the Church grants a plenary indulgence for those who visit a cemetery and pray for the faithful departed under the usual conditions. Let us take advantage of this grace. Choose a soul each day and offer these prayers for them.

And let us commend all the faithful departed to the mercy of God, confident that our prayers hasten their journey to heaven — where, one day, we hope to join them in eternal joy.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,

and let perpetual light shine upon them.

May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed,

through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.