Pastor's Weekly Message

31st Sunday In Ordinary Time,

1-2 Nov 2025

Dear Fellow Saints-in-the-Making,

Joyful greetings in Jesus Who has opened the Gates of Heaven!

Our Church’s annual celebration of All Souls’ Day is all the more meaningful in that we are able to commemorate this Feast Day together as a parish family, since it falls on a Sunday. We will remember by name those from our parish who have died in the past year and those who have been buried from our parish in the past year. At each Mass different names of our beloved dead from the past year will be included in the Prayer of the Faithful after the Profession of Faith in the Creed.  To all who have lost a loved one, this year or in the years prior, please know of my particular prayers for you and yours today.

Holy Mother Church celebrates the Feast of All Souls as a Spiritual Work of Mercy, by which we are exhorted to pray for the dead. In His infinite Wisdom and Mercy, God allows our prayers to be filled with the power of His Grace so that our remembrance of those who have died may lessen their time in Purgatory and may bring them more quickly into Heaven. It is God’s Grace at work in our prayers, to be sure. Nevertheless, as St. Augustine has written, “God does not save us without us.” He welcomes and invites our cooperation with His Grace. And this includes praying for the eternal repose of the deceased.

We are blessed at St. Jude to have at least two different ways of remembering the deceased today but also throughout November, the month dedicated to All Souls. First, we may spend some time in the Adoration Chapel adoring Our Eucharistic Lord. Because Bishop Koenig has designated our Adoration Chapel as a Site of Pious Visits during this Year of Jubilee, your prayers in the chapel can help a soul be released from Purgatory and enter into eternal life with our Risen Savior Jesus Christ through a plenary indulgence (the full remission of sins). Information on how to do so may be found on the table by the front door. You may go every day for prayer as a means of releasing many souls from Purgatory, who will all be waiting for you at the Gates of Heaven to thank you for your prayers. Secondly, we may spend some time in prayer at the cemetery behind the Adoration Chapel or at any cemetery from November 1-November 8 for the plenary indulgence of a soul in Purgatory. Going at other times of the month and even the year allows for a partial indulgence (the partial remission of sins).

On a different note, about 50 pilgrims and I will leave on November 4 for our parish pilgrimage for the Jubilee Year in Rome. Please know that I shall hold our entire parish family in my prayers at the Holy Sites of Italy, including at the Shrines of the Holy House of Nazareth (Jesus’ House as He was growing up), St. Francis and St. Clare, St. Carlo Acutis and St. Padre Pio, and, of course, St. Peter’s Basilica.



God love you! I do.

Fr. Lewis