WINNEBAGO—Calling it a “unique annual celebration,” Bishop David Malloy shared a bit about the people he had recalled that morning when waking from sleep.
His two predecessors — the late Bishops Thomas G. Doran and Arthur J. O’Neill — were high on that list, along with his father, grandparents and deceased priests of the diocese.
Those who had gathered at the mausoleum at Calvary Cemetery for the feast day’s noon Mass had their own deceased loved ones to remember, he said.
“It hurts. (That) simply is what death is,” the bishop said. Thoughts may well begin with wondering, “What is going to happen to me when I die?” and flow into similar ponderings about those loved ones who have already passed.
But amid the sorrows of loss, “All Souls is a day of great consolation,” he said. “It is to say that you and I don’t have to die perfect.”
The imperfect elements within that “continue to raise their heads in us,” he said, meaning that “if we had to die in perfection, we would be pessimistic, and rightly so” about being able to be with God in heaven.
But purgatory means that for those who do not die in mortal sin, “God Himself will perfect them,” he said.
The gift of that “great hope,” Bishop Malloy said, “is to be optimistic that (our loved ones) will be with Him.”
He shared reflections about purgatory from both Bishop Robert Barron’s Catholicism series and from Pope Benedict XVI, including that souls in purgatory “recognize they are not yet ready” to be with God and so cooperate in becoming perfected.
The whole process of purgatory, Bishop Malloy concluded, is “great news (that) here now is the completion of that whole process … (which) ends in that joy” of being with God.
Souls in purgatory — the loved ones of those in attendance, persons from whom they were estranged, and “those who died alone” and in need of hope — were remembered in the intercessory petitions with a few moments of silence for Mass-goers to bring to mind those whom they have lost and continue to miss.
The bishop was at the door to greet people as they exited the mausoleum, and several people then traveled to parts of Calvary Cemetery to visit gravesites of their relatives and friends.