Why praying for the dead is a form of love

The truth Catholics celebrate​

Forese had not been dead that long, not even five years. That’s why Dante wondered how he’d made so much progress. An old friend of Dante’s, Forese is found in the Purgatorio, Canto XXIII.

Surprised, as I said, that he had advanced so much in so short a time, Dante asked him, “how did you come so far so fast?” He would have thought he’d find him “down below,” but here he was quite a way up the mountain, well on his way to Paradise. How?

“It is my Nella,” Forese answered. That was Forese’s widow. “With her devoted prayers and with her sighs, she plucked me from the slope where one must wait and freed me from the other circles,” he said. Her prayers were the how and the why of Forese’s progress through Purgatory. Her prayer had helped him on his way.

Now, of course, that’s just a poem, a work of fiction, but it expresses a great truth, the truth we Catholics celebrate each year on All Souls Day.

Prayers for the dead​

Falling on a Sunday this year, All Souls Day takes precedent. The church will not celebrate the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time but instead the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed.

Continued below.