This has been a crazy year. The COVID-19 pandemic in one way or another has taken its toll on all of us. We are hunkered down. We are socially distancing ourselves. We follow the number of new reported cases of coronavirus. We have seen and have been sobered by the increase in the numbers of people who have died from COVID-19.

This year – perhaps more than any other year – we have been more cognizant of our own mortality and the mortality of those we love. All of us have lost someone to this pandemic: if not a member of our immediate families or a friend, then someone in our larger family of faith. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we are a family, and because priests and men and women religious and thousands of lay Catholics have succumbed to the coronavirus, then we have indeed been lessened by their deaths.

At this time of the year, the Church is once again asking us to focus on and remember and pray for those who have died. Nov. 2, which this year falls on a Monday, is the Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed, commonly called All Souls Day. It is a day set aside by the Church when we are asked to pray fervently for the departed.

In a recent talk, Pope Francis, speaking about those who have died of COVID-19 in particular and all who have died in general, said praying for their souls “is a thanksgiving to the Lord for having given them (to us) and for their love and friendship.” He said that when we remember the dead, “we pray with Christian hope that they are with Him in paradise, in the expectation of being together again in that mystery of love that we don’t understand, but which we know is true because it is a promise that Jesus made.”

This Commemoration of All Souls always reminds me of the irony I see in the Catholic perspective of death.

Naturally, losing a loved one is a sad and painful experience. But – and this is where I see the irony – it is also a time of hope and expectation. Our faith teaches us that death is neither the end of our deceased loved one nor the end of our relationship with that person. The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church says the Church “accepts loyally the venerable faith of our ancestors in the living communion which exists between us and our brothers who are in the glory of heaven or who are yet being purified after their death.”

That means we have the hope that our faithfully departed will be with God in heaven, and the expectation that one day we, too, will join them in sharing the beatific vision. I feel sorry for atheists and others who reject this belief, and therefore do not have the comfort of this consolation.

My father, my mother, my brother and my grandparents are buried along with other family members in a Catholic cemetery in Wilmington, Delaware. It makes my family feel good to know that their remains are interred in a well-tended and respectful location.

I have a relative who frequently visits our family grave site. She takes great comfort in “visiting” with our deceased loved ones, sometimes leaving little tokens at their grave markers. Her actions demonstrate the “living communion” that the Church teaches.

I, on the other hand, do not feel a need for frequent visits. But, I still enjoy that same “living communion” with them.

Every single day since my grandparents, and then my father, and then my mother and now my brother have died, I have prayed for them. Sadly, my list of departed loved ones continues to grow. Frequently I “talk” to them. I have had Masses offered for them. Those prayers and Masses and talking to them reminds me that the love and bond my family members and I shared when they were alive were not broken by their deaths.

I assume that most of us pray for our deceased loved ones. I guess that makes every day an All Souls Day as far as our loved ones are concerned. Perhaps Nov. 2 is the day for us to pray not just for our own beloved departed, but for all the poor souls in purgatory and for all those who have no one else to pray for them.

Remembering victims of the pandemic during a recent Mass at the Vatican, Pope Francis said, “let us pray for the dead … And let us also pray in a special way for the ‘anonymous’ dead. There are so many.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that prayer for the dead “is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective... it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins.”

Praying for departed souls has been encouraged by some of the Church’s greatest saints.

St. Monica, on her deathbed, told her sons: “Put this body anywhere! Don’t trouble yourselves about it! I simply ask you to remember me at the Lord’s altar wherever you are.”

St. Gregory, a Doctor of the Church, said, “Do not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them.”

St. Cyril of Jerusalem said we should pray for those who have “fallen asleep before us, in the belief that it is a great benefit to the souls on whose behalf the supplication is offered.”

Praying for the dead is a great spiritual work of mercy. The catechism says that when we pray for the dead there is a “perennial link of charity” between the saints in heaven, souls in purgatory, and those of us still living.

What greater act of charity could there be than praying for those in purgatory?

St. Ambrose, another venerable Doctor of the Church, frequently spoke of our need to pray for the dead. “We have loved them during life,” he once said, “let us not abandon them in death until we have conducted them by our prayers into the house of the Lord.”

While All Souls Day may be a particularly Catholic observance, the Church remains faithful to her Old Testament roots in the belief in praying for the dead. The practice of praying for and offering sacrifices for the dead was common to the Jews. In 2 Maccabees, Judah, the leader of the Jewish army, sent silver to the Temple as a “sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead” because “it is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.”

In Sirach, faithful Jews were urged to “withhold not your kindness from the dead.”

Starting on All Souls Day – or even this very day – let’s resolve to pray for all the dead, and not just our family members and friends. 

There are two traditional prayers to remember the faithful departed. One is to pray six “Our Fathers,” six “Hail Marys” and six “Glorias” for the intentions of the pope and the souls in purgatory. The other is to pray, “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. And let the perpetual light shine upon them. And may the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”

I like the idea that All Souls Day comes right after All Saints Day. Honoring our beloved dead right after honoring all the saints reminds us that heaven is not just a concept or an unattainable goal, but an actuality that is attainable to all who strive for it. I think, especially in this year of pandemic and fear and worry, that is a good thing to remember.