Catholic Fire

Today we celebrate the eve of All Saints. Pope Sixtus IV in 1484 established November 1, the feast of All Saints, as a holy day of obligation and gave it both a vigil (known today as "All Hallows' Eve" or "Hallowe'en") and an eight-day period or octave to celebrate the feast. By 1955, the octave of All Saints was removed. All Hallows' Eve Halloween or All Hallows' Eve is not a liturgical feast on the Catholic calendar, but the celebration has deep ties to the Liturgical Year. These three consecutive days — Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day — illustrate the Communion of Saints. The Church Militant (those on earth, striving to get to heaven) pray for the Church Suffering (those souls in Purgatory) especially on All Souls Day and the month of November. We also rejoice and honor the Church Triumphant (the saints, canonized and uncanonized) in heaven. We also ask the Saints to intercede for us, and for the souls in Purgatory. Since Vat...

October 30, 2013 (Romereports.com) During Wednesday's General Audience, and ahead of the celebration of All Saints' Day, Pope Francis described the communion of saints as the spiritual fraternity between the saints. But he added this unity extends to Catholics today, which are all united to the Body of Christ. As a result of this communion, the Pope said, Catholics should support each other spiritually. ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE POPE'S CATECHESIS Dear Brothers and Sisters: In our catechesis on the Creed, we now reflect on “the communion of saints.” As the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, this is a communion “in holy things” and “among holy persons” (No. 948). The communion of saints is the deepest reality of the Church, because in Christ, through Baptism, we are made sharers in the communion of life and love which is the Blessed Trinity. As such, we are united to one another in the Body of Christ. Through this fraternal communion we draw nearer to ...

Today is the day that Christians began to prepare food such as bread of the dead and soul cakes for the feast of All Souls. In some areas people would beg for ingredients to make these cakes on this day. A soul cake was a sort of oat cake, which, in Catholic times was baked specially as a gift for poor and needy people, and these people on receiving it would pray for the dead belonging to those who gave it. Fire has always been a symbol of immortality, and the immortality of the soul was symbolized by lighting fires during the night of All Souls; perhaps the simpler people thought that their little furze fires dotted over the hillsides would show the way to souls who were that day making their journey from purgatory to heaven! Long after the Catholic faith had been cast out of this country, relics remained at Soulmass of the once universal praying for the dead, though, as was inevitable, these became empty and corrupt. Even in the 19th century girls still went "souling" fr...