We often think of friends and family who have died and wonder if their immediate loved ones are praying for them after death. There are also the people who died long ago or who were ignored and abandoned in this life and have no one to pray for them now. This is the prayer for all of these beloved children, awaiting to enter their eternal homeland.
(Czech artist Jakub Schikaneder’s 1888 painting “All Souls Day”)
O merciful God, take pity on those souls who have no particular friends and intercessors to recommend them to Thee, who, either through the negligence of those that are alive, or through length of time are forgotten by their friends and by all.
Spare them, O Lord, and remember Thine own mercy, when others forget to appeal to it. Let not the souls which Thou has created be parted from Thee, their Creator. They are Thy work, and though they have sinned, they have been redeemed by Thee.
Vouchsafe, therefore, to look upon them and to deliver them from the intolerable pain of absence from Thee; the light and love of all Thy creatures. Oh! place them in the number of Thy blessed Saints and citizens through Jesus Christ their Savior. Amen.
This picture is of the side altar at St. Michael’s Church in Chicago, a church that survived the great fire. It is called the Poor Souls altar and shows a soul being raised from purgatory to be united with Christ through the intercession of a priest during Mass. Have a Mass said for a poor soul today!
A Latin phrase at the bottom inset of the Altar is translated as “The written book will be brought forth, in which the whole is contained whence the world is to be judged.”
