(Vatican Radio) Pope Benedict XVI prayed for his predecessors on Friday evening in
the crypt beneath St. Peter’s Basilica where many deceased popes are buried. The pope’s
prayerful recollection was a practice marking the Solemnity of All Souls - one that
that fits into the broader tradition of devotion and ritual solicitude for the faithful
departed and for all those who have gone to their rest, which the Church celebrates
and practices in November. The month of November is one in which the Church contemplates
the great mystery of the Communion of Saints, beginning with the Solemnity of All
Saints. It is a theme to which the Holy Father addressed some of his remarks at the
Angelus prayer with the faithful on All Saints’ Day. “This feast day,” said Pope Benedict,
“helps us to reflect on the double horizon of humanity, which we symbolically express
with the words ‘earth’ and ‘heaven’.” The Holy Father went on to say, “The earth represents
the journey of history, heaven eternity, the fullness of life in God.” The Pope explained
that the Solemnity helps us to think about the Church journeying in time and the Church
that celebrates the never-ending feast, the Heavenly Jerusalem. “These two dimensions,”
he said, “are united by the reality of the ‘communion of saints’: a reality that begins
here on earth and that reaches its fulfilment in heaven.”