Commemoration of All Souls Day, November 2nd 2008, by Pope Benedict XIV.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Yesterday the feast of All Saints brought us to contemplate "your holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem, our mother" (Preface, All Saints). Today, with our heart still turned toward this ultimate reality, we commemorate all of the faithful departed, who have "gone before us marked with the sign of faith and... who sleep in Christ" (Eucharistic Prayer I). It is very important that we Christians live a relationship of the truth of the faith with the deceased and that we view death and the afterlife in the light of Revelation. Already the Apostle Paul, writing to the first communities, exhorted the faithful to "not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since", he wrote, "we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep" (1 Thes 4: 13-14). Today too, it is necessary to evangelize about the reality of death and eternal life, realities particularly subject to superstitious beliefs and syncretisms, so that the Christian truth does not risk mixing itself with myths of various types.
