The custom of setting aside a single day for all the faithful departed spread from Cluny, where Saint Odilo assigned November 2 to the commemoration for his monasteries at the end of the tenth century. The date, following immediately upon the Solemnity of All Saints, expresses the one communion of saints: the Church in glory, the Church still being purified, and the Church on earth. The practice rests on the Church's constant faith that prayer and sacrifice avail for the dead, a conviction Scripture already reflects in the account of Judas Maccabeus offering atonement for the fallen, and which the Catechism sets out in its teaching on the final purification. In the Table of Liturgical Days the Commemoration is ranked in the highest class together with the solemnities of the General Roman Calendar, and so it is celebrated even when November 2 falls on a Sunday, taking the place of that Sunday in Ordinary Time. Its proper name is a commemoration rather than a feast: the Church does not celebrate a triumph but intercedes. Every priest may offer three Masses on this day, a permission granted by Pope Benedict XV in 1915, with one offered for the intention of the priest, one for all the faithful departed, and one for the intentions of the Holy Father. Violet vestments are ordinarily used; black and white are also permitted. The liturgy's tone is confident rather than bleak: the readings speak of the souls of the just resting in the hand of God and of the resurrection promised to those baptized into Christ's death. Related customs are ancient and widespread — visiting and blessing graves, lighting candles, inscribing names in a book of the dead kept near the altar through November. The Church attaches a plenary indulgence, applicable only to the souls in purgatory, to a devout visit to a cemetery with prayer for the dead on each day from November 1 through 8, under the usual conditions of confession, Communion, and prayer for the Holy Father's intentions.

Solemnity

Ordinary time

November 2

solemnity