Romans 5: 5-11
Brothers and sisters:
Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
We Remember
Yesterday, the Solemnity of All Saints, Pope Leo XIV declared Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman a Doctor of the Church. There are now 38 Doctors of the Church.
One of Newman’s Parochial and Plain Sermons is called “The Invisible World.” It speaks of those whom we do not see but who are always present with us, especially when we gather to celebrate the Eucharist.
They are those whom we Roman Catholics and others remember in every Eucharistic Prayer—the saints, canonized or not, for whose intercession we pray and the dead whom we commend to the infinite mercy of God—those we remembered on yesterday’s Solemnity of All Saints and those we remember on today’s Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed.
These are those whom we long to see “in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”—whom Newman referred to in his “Lead, Kingly Light,” where he prays that “with the morn” he will see “those angel faces smile, which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!”
—Fr. Bob Hagan, SJ, is a member of a community of senior Jesuits at Saint Ignatius Hall in Black Jack, Missouri. He gives spiritual direction, mostly online; gives sacramental care to the lay Catholics in the adjacent retirement community; writes occasional reflections for Jesuit Prayer; posts various daily items and a longer weekly reflection on the Sunday Mass readings on his Facebook site at Bob Hagan SJ; and drives fellow Jesuits who no longer drive wherever they want to go.
Prayer
We pray for our beloved dead and all the faithful departed, commending them to the infinite mercy of God, and we pray:
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.
—Fr. Bob Hagan, SJ
Pray with the Pope
Pray with the monthly prayer intentions of the pope.