With the change of seasons, we had the opportunity this week to mark a pair of celebrations that have deep meaning for our Catholic faith. They are the Solemnity of All Saints and the Feast of All Souls, celebrated Nov. 1 and 2 respectively.

Both of those celebrations are a part of the final end for every person. And they help us to understand our Christian and Catholic approach to death and its place in our world.

Of course we celebrate saints throughout the year on their special feast days as established by the Church. In doing so we remember their lives, their deeds, and often their struggles. We draw strength from seeing how others faithfully went through challenges similar to our own.

Even more, we are reminded to pray to the saints asking for their help and intercession. As a practical matter, we believe deeply that prayer is heard and that it is effective, especially when we ask for grace and for help. It is not simply some sort of personal psychological action that results in a human-generated sense of calm. The saints, as intercessors, love us and pray for us, especially those whom we feel close to and call upon.

In addition to the canonized saints, however, we believe that heaven is populated with others who have been judged worthy and faithful to enter into the Father’s house. Those saints might be our parents and grandparents, siblings or those unknown from time past.

There are undoubtedly more of these uncanonized saints than those formally recognized by the Church. That is why we celebrate on Nov. 1 all the saints. To follow Christ is to be in union with all who love and follow Him, whether they are living or already dead.

On Nov. 2, we celebrate the Feast of All Souls. On that day, we pray in particular for all who have died in the state of grace but who have not yet been fully joined to Christ in heaven. Those are the souls in purgatory undergoing the mystery of their final purification.

What a message of hope is our faith in the reality of purgatory! For ourselves, it means that, except for the case of mortal sin by which we have separated ourselves from God’s love, heaven is still possible even if we are not yet perfect at the moment of death.

God who is all good cannot have in His presence anything that is not holy. So for those in the state of grace, any of those remaining flaws, those failures to love Him fully, that leftover hint of selfishness, all of that must be purified in us in order to be with God. To be a soul in purgatory, then, is to be part of that final process of purification granted by God’s mercy.

Understood in this way, purgatory is a great consolation for us. But even more, for the very same reason we can have great hope for our loved ones who have died. They too can be received into God’s cleansing mercy.

The Feast of All Souls completes this article of faith. It is a reminder that we the living have been granted the privilege of praying for the souls in purgatory. Once again, it is our faith that helps us believe our prayers are effective. In this case they are part of the process of purification.

We should pray then for all of our loved ones who have gone before us. We should pray as well for those with whom in this life we might have been at odds or unreconciled so that our own hearts might be purified. And we should pray for those who died alone or forgotten, with none to pray for them.

Finally, on the Feast of All Souls we are reminded to continually ask ourselves, when did I last visit the gravesites of those whom I have loved? It is a wonderful time this month for a quiet visit and the reflection that one day you and I shall also be there, resting in the hope of prayers for our own final union with Christ.