“All you Holy Angels, Souls and Saints… Pray for Us!”
Every morning, as Sisters of Life, we entrust our day and all it holds to the Lord with a prayer, unique and specific to each mission. Here in our Vocations mission, we conclude by asking for the intercession of all of heaven and purgatory: “All you Holy Angels, Souls, and Saints, pray for us!”
The month of November begins with two awesome feast days. November 1 is the Solemnity of All Saints, where we rejoice in the heroic love of countless Saints, known and unknown. November 2 is the Feast of All Souls, when we intentionally pray for all of those souls who have gone before us into eternity, and still await in purgatory the fulfillment of their hope, the glorious vision of God. November is even known as the month of All Souls.
These beautiful liturgical realities point to two things:
- That we are made for communion! On this Christian journey of life, we need each other. We are part of Christ’s body, the Church, individual members of a community whose Father is the Lord. No matter what vocation we are called to, being with and for the other is at the heart of what it means to be human.
“It is not good for man to be alone” we hear the Lord say in the book of Genesis. In religious life this truth holds as well. I am called within a context of community, to love and be loved by my Sisters, to help them get to heaven. In his encyclical, Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope), Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse.”
- That God wants to make YOU a Saint! Holiness is not something meant only for the extraordinary few; rather, the splendor of the Saints shows us, holiness is our universal call. Living a saintly life is allowing the Lord to reveal to us who we are, fully alive in His eyes, fully free to say Yes with our own unique heart to the gift of our life He has given us. The amazing variety of Saints points to the fact that giving ourselves away in love, living fully in the gift of our own existence is possible for each of us. God calls each of us to greatness and holiness, to reflect His glory in a way that only we can.
May these truths stir in us a desire for ever deeper communion with the Blessed Trinity and with our brothers and sisters on earth, in purgatory, and those rejoicing in heaven. Two great questions to bring to the Lord in prayer this month: how are You calling ME to be a saint? How have you made my heart to love You?
Be assured of our prayers, in Christ, our Life
