November, the Holy Souls, and Why We Stand at the Graveside
There is a particular quality to a cemetery in November. The light goes early, the grass is wet, and the flowers people left in the summer have long since given up. It is not a cheerful place. And yet every year, on one Saturday in November, a good number of us from St Anthony’s walk through those gates together, and nobody has to be persuaded to come.
This year the Blessing of the Graves takes place on Saturday 7th November at 12 noon in Slough Cemetery.
The Month of the Holy Souls
November opens with two great feasts that belong together. On the first we keep All Saints, and we celebrate those who have reached God and now see Him face to face. On the second we keep All Souls, and we turn our attention to those who have died and are still being made ready for Him.
The whole month then carries that character. The Church sets November aside for the Holy Souls, and the Blessing of the Graves is the moment our parish does something about it together rather than privately.
Why Catholics Pray for the Dead
Praying for the dead is one of the oldest instincts of the faith. You find it scratched on the walls of the catacombs, where the early Christians buried their own and asked God to give them peace. It is older still than that. In the Second Book of Maccabees, Judas Maccabeus takes up a collection and sends it to Jerusalem so that sacrifice might be offered for soldiers who had fallen, and Scripture comments that “it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins” (2 Maccabees 12:46).
Behind that instinct lies a doctrine that is often described badly, so let us describe it properly. The Church teaches that nothing unclean can enter heaven (Revelation 21:27). Most of us will die loving God genuinely but imperfectly, still carrying attachments and habits that have no place in His presence. Purgatory is not a second chance and it is not a punishment inflicted by a reluctant God. It is the final purification of someone already saved, the last washing of the face before the child is brought in to the feast. It hurts the way healing hurts.
And because those souls are still part of the family, we can help them. That is the point of our prayers, our Masses, and our standing at those gravesides in the cold.
One Family, Three Parts
When we say in the Creed that we believe in the communion of saints, we are saying something very practical.
The Church is not only the people you can see at the 10:30 Mass. It is also the saints in glory who pray for us, and the souls being purified who cannot now help themselves but can be helped by us. Three parts, one body, bound together in Christ and not divided by death.
This is why a Catholic cemetery visit is not simply an act of remembrance, lovely though remembering is. We are not merely thinking fond thoughts about people who are gone. We are doing something for them, and we believe it reaches them.
Why We Bless the Grave Itself
Some people find it curious that we bless a plot of earth. We do it because of what Christians believe about the body.
Your body is not a shell that the real you discarded. St Paul calls it a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). It was washed in the waters of Baptism, anointed with chrism, fed with the Blessed Sacrament, and at the end anointed again. Every Sunday we profess our belief in the resurrection of the body, and we mean it literally.
So the grave is not a disposal point. It is more like a field in winter. St Paul reaches for exactly that image when he writes about what is sown perishable being raised imperishable (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). We sprinkle holy water on the grave, and that water is not decoration. It recalls the Baptism in which that person first died and rose with Christ, and it says plainly that the Church has not finished with them.
If You Are Grieving
If you lost someone this year, you may be dreading the day rather than looking forward to it. Please come anyway, and come knowing that nobody will expect you to be composed.
Our Lord stood at the grave of a friend and wept (John 11:35). He knew perfectly well that He was about to raise Lazarus, and He wept regardless. Grief is not a failure of faith. What faith changes is not the sorrow but the horizon. St Paul says it exactly: we do not grieve “like the rest of men, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). We grieve as people who expect to see them again.
There is also real comfort in doing this alongside others. Standing in a crowd of parishioners, many of whom are carrying the same weight, is a very different thing from visiting a grave alone on a wet Tuesday.
A Word About Indulgences
It is worth knowing, because many Catholics were never told, that the Church attaches a particular grace to these November visits.
From the 1st to the 8th of November, the faithful who visit a cemetery and pray for the dead may obtain a plenary indulgence, applicable to the souls in purgatory, under the usual conditions of sacramental confession, Holy Communion, and prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father. On other days of the year the same visit gains a partial indulgence.
Put simply: this is one of the most generous things you can do for someone who has died. It costs you an hour of a Saturday.
Join Us on 7th November
The details are straightforward:
Blessing of the Graves
Saturday 7th November, 12 noon
Slough Cemetery
Fr Nathaniel will lead the prayers and bless the graves. Please dress for the weather, because we will be outdoors and November in Slough rarely shows mercy.
Do come even if nobody belonging to you is buried there. Many of the graves in that cemetery no longer have anyone left to visit them. The people who loved them have died in their turn, or moved away, and nobody has stood at that spot in years. When we pray there, we pray for them too, and that is one of the quietest and best things our parish does.
Bring the children as well. Children take cemeteries much better than adults expect, and a child who grows up understanding that we pray for our dead has been handed something solid.
Other parish events through the coming months, including our Memorial Mass, the Carol Service and the Advent Reconciliation Service, are listed here:
See the Parish Diary for all forthcoming dates →
Eternal Rest
If you can do nothing else this November, learn this prayer again and say it when someone comes to mind. It is short, and generations of Catholics have carried it:
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.
They are not forgotten. Not by God, and not by us.
Written by parishioners of St Anthony of Padua, Slough.