To me, there is no other time in the liturgical year than the month of November, and particularly All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, in which the reality of the three states of the Church is as striking. It is on these holy days that the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant all seem to embrace; it is a liminal time, a time in which the veil that separates us is lifted a little, and we pilgrims here on Earth are reminded that—as St. Therese of Lisieux once said—“the world is [our] ship, not [our] home.”  

The Church celebrates feast days on almost every day of the year, and for those of us who are attuned to the ebb and flow of the liturgical year, marking the coming and going of feast days is most ordinary. But there is something extravagant and extraordinary about All Saints’ Day. It is, of course, not celebrated quite like Christmas or Easter or even Pentecost, but it is a holy day of obligation, which is certainly indicative of its significance. For me, All Saints’ Day is the day that Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment and Fra Angelico’s The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs flood my thoughts, and I contemplate the unfathomable reality of heaven. It is the day that I spend the most time picturing the saints together, as they dwell now and forevermore in heaven, rather than imagining them as they were here on earth. It is the day, then, on which my moral imagination stretches a little more to try to accommodate the mystery of the Body of Christ. 

St. Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians that we are all part of one mystical Body of Christ, His Church: those of us who are yet travailing in this vale of tears are the Church Militant; the holy souls in purgatory whom we remember and for whom we offer works and prayers on All Souls’ Day are the Church Suffering; and the saints in heaven—canonized or unknown—are the Church Triumphant. We all constitute one Body, of which Christ Himself is the head. St. Paul examines this mystery beautifully in his letter to the Corinthians, writing, among other things, that “God hath set the members every one of them in the body as it hath pleased him. He uses the image of the body to elaborate upon the reality that Christians are all woven together inextricably, and that we are all one and in need of each other. For, he writes, “the eye cannot say to the hand: I need not thy help; nor again the head to the feet: I have no need of you.” 

But this reality is not limited to those of us on earth. It encompasses those souls suffering in purgatory, and especially those blessed souls in heaven. Although it might be said that the souls in heaven have no need of us here on earth, they greatly desire to give glory to God by interceding on our behalf. One only needs to look to the Little Flower, who said that she hoped “to spend [her] heaven in doing good on earth.” On the other hand, we need the prayers of the saints in heaven, and it is through their example and especially through their intercession that the Lord grants us many graces. And, finally, the holy souls in purgatory are in need of both the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant. The Church has traditionally taught that the poor souls in purgatory cannot pray for themselves and that they cannot merit anything on their own account. It is an act of mercy on our behalf to pray for them, and to offer little sacrifices for their deliverance from purgatory. While it is unclear whether the souls in purgatory can in turn pray for us—saints such as Thomas Aquinas and Alphonsus Liguori have disagreed on the matter—the Lord, Who sees what is done in secret shall repay us for what we have done for the littlest of His children. 

It is a mystery indeed, but in belonging to the Mystical Body of Christ, we can be assured of the fact that although we will certainly struggle and fall, we are not alone; the hundreds and thousands of known and unknown saints in heaven are interceding for us at every moment. God willing, we will one day join them there.