Nearly three years ago, I watched my father slowly fade from terminal cancer.
He passed in March of 2024.
A few months later, my father-in-law was rushed into emergency surgery.
He didn't come home.
With my dad, we saw it coming.
With my father-in-law, no one did.
Two fathers, gone from this world in the same year.
But we know this isn't the end of them.
So what do we do with that?
November is the month the Church remembers the dead.
All Saints on the first.
All Souls on the second.
Then a whole month that asks us not to forget.
Most of us do forget.
I forget.
We bury people and then we get busy.
The Church doesn't let us off that easy.
She says the dead still need us.
And we still need to remember that we'll be dead one day too.
Why we pray for the dead at all
Catholics believe that death isn't the end of love.
Someone can die in God's friendship and still not be finished.
Still carrying attachments.
Still needing to be made clean before they see Him face to face.
The Church calls that purification purgatory.
It isn't punishment for its own sake.
It's love finishing what it started.
And we can help.
Our prayers, our sacrifices and above all the Mass can be offered for them.
That's what November is for.
All Souls Day: November 2, 2026
All Souls falls on Monday, November 2 this year.
It's the day the whole Church prays for every soul still being purified.
Not just our own people.
The forgotten ones too. The ones nobody prays for anymore.
If you can, go to Mass that day.
Ask that it be offered for your dead.
Say their names.
The cemetery visit: the November 1–8 indulgence
There's an old practice most people have never heard of.
From November 1 through November 8, the Church grants a plenary indulgence, applicable only to the souls in purgatory, to anyone who devoutly visits a cemetery and prays for the dead, even if only silently.
You can gain it once a day during those eight days, each time for a soul.
There's a second one on All Souls Day itself: visit a church or oratory and pray the Our Father and the Creed there. If you can't make it Monday, ask your parish. Your bishop can move that visit to the Sunday before or after, or to All Saints.
To gain a plenary indulgence, the usual conditions apply:
- Go to confession. One confession can cover several indulgences if it's made within a few weeks before or after.
- Receive Holy Communion. Once for each indulgence, ideally the same day.
- Pray for the Pope's intentions. An Our Father and a Hail Mary is enough.
- Be detached from all sin, even venial sin.
That last one is the hard one.
It means wanting nothing more than God.
Letting go of the thing you've been holding onto.
This is the part that's about dying to self.
You can't free someone else while you're still holding onto your own chains.
If you're not fully detached, the indulgence becomes partial.
It still helps. Go anyway.
What to actually do
Keep it simple.
- Go to confession sometime in late October or early November.
- Pick a cemetery. Your family's, or the closest one.
- Walk it slowly. Read the names. Most of these people have nobody praying for them.
- Stop at a grave. Pray the Eternal Rest prayer. Say a name if you know one.
- Go to Mass. Receive Communion.
- Pray an Our Father and a Hail Mary for the Pope's intentions.
Ten minutes.
Do it once, or every day of the octave.
The Eternal Rest prayer
This is the prayer.
Learn it by heart. It's short on purpose.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May they rest in peace.
And may the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Amen.
Say it at a grave.
Say it when you drive past a cemetery.
Say it when you hear someone has died.
Remember your own death
Standing in a cemetery does something to you.
Every stone was somebody's whole life.
Their plans. Their worries. Their arguments.
Now it's a name and two dates.
One day it'll be mine.
One day someone will walk past my name and, I hope, pray for me.
That's memento mori.
Not fear.
Just the truth, held honestly, so I live the days I have well.
A prayer
Lord,
I give You the ones I've lost.
My father, Donald Allen. My father-in-law, Gordon Bishop.
Finish in them what You started.
Bring them home.
And teach me to die a little every day,
to my pride, to my comfort, to myself,
so that when my day comes
I'm ready to see You.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.
Amen.
