November 8-9, 2025
Dear parishioners,
The month of November on the secular calendar brings us fully into the holiday season. We already took part in Halloween a few weeks ago, and we are already looking ahead and making our plans for our annual Thanksgiving celebrations at the end of the month. Naturally, that means that Christmas and New Year’s Day are right around the corner once more.
On the Church’s liturgical calendar too, the month of November inserts us into a season of “holy days.” On November 1, we celebrated All Saints Day, on which we gave thanks and praise to God, who is the source of the merits of all the saints. All the saints in the heavenly court, including the multitude of whom we do not know, give us hope; they are examples to us of how to faithfully make our pilgrimage through this life and into the eternal happiness of heaven. The next day, November 2, we celebrated All Souls Day. On this day each year, we are reminded of, and actively participate in, the Church’s motherly solicitude for the souls in purgatory. The poor souls rely on our prayers and sacrifices to mitigate the temporal punishment (time of purification in purgatory) still due to them.
In two weeks, we will be celebrating another special day on the liturgical calendar: the Solemnity of Christ the King. The solemnity of Christ the King marks the conclusion of the liturgical year. As such, there is an intentional progression of these November feast days. We celebrate the saints in heaven, we pray for the souls in purgatory, and we ourselves are pilgrims on earth trying making our way homeward. Some parts of this journey go smoothly. At other times, our pilgrimage on earth can feel like a ship being tossed in all directions by the waves of the sea. Such is the reality of the Church on earth!
Pope Benedict XVI helps us enter into what we will celebrate on Christ the King:
In the Gospel we see that everyone asks Jesus to come down from the Cross. They mock him, but this is also a way of excusing themselves from blame as if to say: it is not our fault that you are hanging on the Cross; it is solely your fault because if you really were the Son of God, the King of the Jews, you would not stay there but would save yourself by coming down from that infamous scaffold.[…]
Then there is the faith of the Good Thief: a faith barely outlined but sufficient to assure him salvation: “Today you will be with me in Paradise”. This “with me” is crucial. Yes, it is this that saves him. Of course, the good thief is on the cross like Jesus, but above all he is on the Cross with Jesus. And, unlike the other evildoer and all those who taunt him, he does not ask Jesus to come down from the Cross nor to make him come down. Instead he says: “remember me when you come into your kingdom”.[…] The Good Thief sees Jesus on the Cross, disfigured and unrecognizable and yet he entrusts himself to him as to a king, indeed as to the King. The good thief believes what was written on the tablet over Jesus’ head: “The King of the Jews”. He believed and entrusted himself.[…] It calls us to be with Jesus, like Mary, and not to ask him to come down from the Cross but rather to stay there with him.[…]
And we must witness and proclaim this paradoxical kingship as he, the King, did, that is, by following his own way and striving to adopt his same logic, the logic of humility and service, of the ear of wheat which dies to bear fruit.
Christ’s kingship does not follow the logic of this world. He reigns supremely as king on the Cross, where he conquers Satan’s tyranny of sin and death. The more we stand with Mary at the foot of the Cross and keep the gaze of our mind and heart fixed on Christ the King, we become more and more conformed to Jesus’ sacred heart, to his desires.
Blessings,
Fr. Ammanniti
