Notes on All Souls Day.

Today is the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, more generally known as All Souls Day. I've long had a fondness for this particular feast, and thus I was delighted to give the homily at this morning's community Mass. The gist of what I said is that All Souls Day is about remembering the people who've made a difference in our lives who have passed away. In large part, All Souls Day is about memory - and so is the Christian faith itself. Jesuits, I said, have a particularly strong awareness of this fact, as the concepts of memory and recollection play an important role in Ignatian spirituality. In the Examen of Consciousness, for example, we remember the events of our day to see how God has been working in our lives. Then we have the Suscipe, the prayer Ignatius offers us at the conclusion of the Spiritual Exercises, "Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will ..." When it comes down to it, we're all about memory, and so is All Souls Day. AMDG.