Pope Leo XIV at All Souls’ Mass: Turn memories into hope. Love conquers death; Christ leads us to eternal reunion with loved ones.
Newsroom (03/11/2025, Gaudium Press ) Pope Leo XIV on Sunday called on Catholics to transform memories of departed loved ones into forward-looking hope rooted in Christ’s Resurrection, declaring that “love conquers death” and unites the living with those who have gone before.
Presiding over Holy Mass for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed at Rome’s Verano Cemetery on Nov. 2, the pontiff told thousands gathered among the graves that Christian remembrance is not mere nostalgia but a promise of an “unending feast” with the Risen Lord.
“We are not gathered merely to commemorate those who have departed from this world,” Pope Leo said in his homily. “Our Christian faith, founded upon Christ’s Paschal mystery, helps us to experience our memories as more than just a recollection of the past but also, and above all, as hope for the future.”
Drawing from the prophet Isaiah’s vision of a banquet where “the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food… [and] swallow up death forever” (Is 25:6,8), the pope described heaven as an “encounter of love” where God gathers believers with their loved ones.
He stressed that this hope is no “illusion for soothing the pain of our separation” but a certainty grounded in Jesus’ victory over death. Quoting his own Oct. 15 general audience, Pope Leo reminded the faithful: “The Risen One guarantees our arrival, leading us home, where we are awaited, loved and saved.”
The pontiff urged acts of charity as the pathway to this eternal reunion, citing Matthew 25:35-36: “I was hungry and you gave me food… I was in prison and you visited me.” Such love, he said, forges an “unbreakable bond” with the departed and turns daily life into “a prayer rising up to God.”
Even amid grief, Pope Leo encouraged the assembly to entrust themselves to “the hope that does not disappoint” (Rom 5:5) and to envision their loved ones “enfolded in [Christ’s] light.” He concluded by affirming that the Lord, having already conquered death in the Paschal mystery, awaits believers at journey’s end for a joyful reunion.
The full sermon can be read here
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Vatican.va
Related Images:
