November 03, 2012: 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 fulfillment in heaven.”