ABOVE: The entry to the Our Lady of Peace Mausoleum in Baldwinsville.
All Saints and All Souls Days usher in a time of remembrance
By Dc. Tom Cuskey, editor
As this story is published, it’s Halloween Day. Kids across the diocese are getting ready, costumes prepared and bags in hand, to make the most of All Hallows Eve.
The beautiful interior of the Calvary Cemetery Mausoleum in Johnson City.
Christians around the world are preparing for what follows. “Hallows” is another word for “holy,” so it is a holy eve, readying for the observance of the two hallowed days that ask us to pause and pray for those who have gone before us.
Numerous sources chronicle that the observance of All Saints Day traces back to Rome in May of 609 A.D., as a local celebration of all holy men and women who had gone home to heaven. It became a universal holy day celebrated on November 1 more than 200 years later.
Its companion holy day, All Souls Day, has been observed on November 2 since the 11th Century.
While All Saints is a holy day of obligation and All Souls is not, there is a Catholic tradition of prayer and worship in memory of the faithful departed that marks November as a month of remembrance. All Saints honors those who have reached the goal of heaven. It includes those formally canonized saints and all the good people, known to God, who have been blessed with heavenly bliss.
All Souls honors all our faithful departed and encourages our gratitude for the blessing of their presence in our own lives.
Celebrate through our cemeteries
While parishes throughout the diocese will offer All Saints Day Mass times, diocesan Catholic Cemeteries invites all to remember the faithful departed with Mass on Saturday, November 2.
An entrance to Utica’s Holy Trinity Cemetery Mausoleum
“They’re [Masses] in a beautiful location,” said Mark Barlow of the diocesan cemeteries office. “I know the churches are gorgeous, but we typically hold them inside the mausoleums, and our mausoleums are just spectacular.”
The Covid pandemic took a toll on recent cemetery Mass attendance, but that is changing. Barlow invites all to attend the Mass, especially those who may have had a recent death among their family and close ones.
“For anyone that’s had a death in the family over the last six to 12 months, we send an invitation to the next of kin of those folks,” Barlow said. “We do a mailing, to invite them, as well as advertise in The Catholic Sun, which has nice reach.” Signs have been posted in the mausoleums as well. Masses are open to anyone.
“They’re peaceful, serene, reverent, and it’s just nice, a nice mass, nice atmosphere, right in the cemetery, which is a fundamental particularly on these two days for the cemetery,” Barlow added. “This is where we showcase the cemeteries, and they really support the meaning and the spirituality of these cemeteries.”
Technology has come to the cemetery
Visit the Catholic Cemeteries website and click on “Locate a Loved One” where you can search for friends and loved ones to find the exact burial site as well as obituary information and a place to enter personal memorial thoughts.
“It’s been a long project, a six-year project,” Barlow told us. “And we continue by exposing this data to folks. We give them the opportunity to look at it, [and see] if there’s something missing. We work with multiple families now that are doing genealogy, and they want to provide us with data that was never collected 100 years ago, on their loved one.”
Visit https://syracusecatholiccemeteries.org/ for more information and for the schedule of All Souls Day Masses.
