St. Paul, in dealing with many different communities ... 'parishes,' would often encourage the believers to recognize that there are a variety of gifts, but it is the same Spirit that gives the gifts, for the upbuilding of the body. 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 is an amazing passage where it illustrates that all the various parts of the body make up the Church. That we do not serve the world, but we serve Christ but serve one another. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you what gifts He has given to you and how to use them for the building up of the Church. To bring souls to Jesus.

November is a great month of remembering. We begin with All Saints and All Souls Days later we of course will celebrate Remembrance Day on November 11th. St. Ephrem, the Syrian, first mentions the practice of remembering the unknown martyrs at the beginning of November in a homily in 373. It was Pope Gregory III who first proclaimed All Saints Day on November 1st when he consecrated a chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica to all the unknown martyrs in Rome. Gregory IV made All Saints Day and All Souls Day a universal feast day in 831. I mention all this because it has become fashionable to proclaim that Halloween is some ancient pagan feast that the Church wished to suppress with All Saints Day. This is simply not true on so many levels. Read more: The Ancient Irish Get Far Too Much Credit for Halloween | Ancient Origins. Halloween is just a product of empty secular spiritualism. On the other hand, All Saints Day, All Souls Day and the practice of praying for the dead are foundational to our faith. We all have a sense that our deceased loved ones still live in our thoughts and memories, yet we realize this is only partial and fleeting. How much more does a person live on in the love of God, who knew and loved that person perfectly? Yet, sin gets in the way of God’s love. The dead, particularly those close to us, need our prayers to help them receive forgiveness so that they can become more and more open to God’s love. When we remember someone in our thoughts we bind them to our memories. More wonderfully, when we remember someone at mass or in our prayers we bind them to God’s heart. Those most open to God are the saints who continue to participate in the ministry of God’s love in the Church. As members of Christ’s Church, our religious remembering binds us together as a grace-filled member of Christ’s Body. I commend you to pray for all the members of the Church… both living and dead… so that we may all live in Christ.