ALL SAINTS' DAY

All Saints' Day: translation

A Feast held on November 1, in commemoration of all saints of the Church who are not commemorated on other days. This Festival is very dear to the hearts of Christians. It is a day full of touching memories, when in the Holy Eucharist we memorialize before God the lives not only of Martyrs and Confessors and the great army of valiant and faithful souls in every age and clime, but also of those dear to us by ties of kindred and affection, -- fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, little children and noble youth -- who "having finished their course in faith do now rest from their labors." It is thus we have brought home to us, as in no other way, the meaning and reality of "The Communion of Saints." Amid the solemnities of worship "and memorial we thus learn that the living and the dead are bound together by ties that are eternal, ties that no change of time can break, because before God they areonein the Mystical Body of Christ.

See Diptychs.