Vatican Radio report - Pope
Benedict XVI prayed for his predecessors on Friday evening in the crypt beneath
St. Peter’s Basilica where many deceased popes are buried. The pope’s prayerful
recollection was a practice marking the Solemnity of All Souls - one that that
fits into the broader tradition of devotion and ritual solicitude for the
faithful departed and for all those who have gone to their rest, which the
Church celebrates and practices in November. The month of November is one in
which the Church contemplates the great mystery of the Communion of Saints,
beginning with the Solemnity of All Saints. It is a theme to which the Holy
Father addressed some of his remarks at the Angelus prayer with the faithful on
All Saints’ Day. “This feast day,” said Pope Benedict, “helps us to reflect on
the double horizon of humanity, which we symbolically express with the words
‘earth’ and ‘heaven’.” The Holy Father went on to say, “The earth represents the
journey of history, heaven eternity, the fullness of life in God.” The Pope
explained that the Solemnity helps us to think about the Church journeying in
time and the Church that celebrates the never-ending feast, the Heavenly
Jerusalem. “These two dimensions,” he said, “are united by the reality of the
‘communion of saints’: a reality that begins here on earth and that reaches its
fulfilment in heaven.”SHARED FROM RADIO VATICANA
Comments