A Note From Father Eickhoff
October 27, 2024
This will have to be a quick (and short) bulletin article this week so let me focus on several upcoming important events:
First off is the Solemnity of All Saints on Friday, November 1st. This is one of my favorite feast days during the entire Church year as it is a wonderful reminder that a person does not have to be famous to be a saint. So often we think that a saint must do or achieve some great public ministry in order to be a saint of God. And it is true that holy men and women who have been in the public eye tend to be the ones who are canonized as saints by the Church. However, the men and women who have been and will be canonized by the Church are not the only saints of God. Those persons who have been canonized are given to us by God for our benefit so that we emulate their faith in Christ and their eagerness to live their lives by His teaching. Yet, simple logic tells us that there must be many holy men and women who by God’s grace are saints yet are unknown to us here on Earth. This solemnity is held to honor these unknown saints and to ask them in prayer to aid us with their prayers before God that we might join them in glory one day.
The second important event is the Feast of All Souls on Saturday, November 2nd. This feast is held so that we might fulfill an important spiritual act of mercy, namely, praying for the dead. We certainly hope that almighty God will have mercy upon our souls after our death and grant us a place in His kingdom. Yet we also know that our sins have marred our souls so that we would not “fit in” with the saints of God in glory. We need to be purified from the marring effect of sin upon our souls and this purification is called purgatory by the Church. We should recall that all the souls in purgatory are among the saved and will one day take a place amongst the saints and angels in glory. It is part of our Catholic faith that by our prayers here and now we can assist the souls in purgatory in freeing themselves from the effects of their sins and speed them along in reaching the kingdom of God. Surely, helping souls in purgatory in reaching heaven is a great act of mercy.
Finally, and much less importantly, This Sunday, November 3rd at 2am is the biannual time change in which the clocks turn back one hour. I know that most of you rely on your smart phones to tell time, and those smart phones turn back the time automatically, so you don’t have to worry about waking up at the wrong time. But, for those clocks that are not hooked up to the internet you will have to change them manually. How did we live with changing all those clocks before the internet?
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Stephen Eickhoff
Pastor