How do you spend your All Souls Day?

Answer 1

Roman Catholic Answer

An excellent and pious practice is to visit a cemetery and get a plenary indulgence for your departed loved ones everyday of week of All Souls Day. It is necessary that you be free of all affection for sin - even venial sin; that you go to confession within one week (before or after), that you receive Holy Communion on that day, pray for the Holy Father, and visit the cemetery praying for your deceased. The usual problem is freedom from all affection for sin, but even if you are not there yet, it is still a partial indulgence.

from Enchiridion of Indulgences Norms and Grants, Authorized English Edition, translated by William T. Barry, C.SS.R., Catholic Book Publishing, Co., New York,1969

13 Visit to a Cemetery

An indulgence, applicable only to the Souls in Purgatory, is granted to the faithful, who devoutly visit a cemetery and pray, even if only mentally, for the departed. The indulgence is plenary each day from the 1st to the 8th of November; on other days of the year it is partial.

Norms:

1. An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment due for sins already forgiven as far as their guilt is concerned. This remission the faithful with the proper dispositions and under certain determined conditions acquire thorough the intervention of the Church which, as minister of the Redemption, authoritatively dispenses and applies the treasury of the satisfaction won by Christ and the Saints.

2. An indulgence is partial or plenary, according as it removes either part of all of the temporal punishment due for sin.

4. Partial as well as plenary indulgences can always be applied to the departed by way of suffrage.

22. § 1. To be capable of gaining an indulgence for oneself, it is required that one be baptized, not excommunicated, in the state of grace at least at the completion of the prescribed works, and a subject of the one granting the indulgence.

§ 2. In order that one who is capable may actually gain indulgences, one must have at least a general intention to gain them and must in accordance with the tenor of the grant perform the enjoined works at the time and in the manner prescribed.

24. § 1. A plenary indulgence can be acquired once only in the course of a day.

§ 2. But one can obtain the plenary indulgence for the moment of death, even if another plenary indulgence had already been acquired on the same day.

26. To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfill the following three conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion, and prayer for the intention of the Sovereign Pontiff. It is further required that all attachment of sin, even venial sin, be absent.

If the latter disposition is in any way less than perfect or if the prescribed three conditions are not fulfilled the indulgence will be partial only, saving the provisions given below in Norm 34 and in Norm 35 concerning those who are "impeded".

27. The three conditions may be fulfilled several days before or after the performance of the prescribed work; it is, however, fitting that Communion be received and the prayer for the intention of the Sovereign Pontiff be said on the same day the work is performed.

28. A single sacramental confession suffices for gaining several plenary indulgences; but Communion must be received and prayer for the intentions of the Sovereign Pontiff must be recited for the gaining of each plenary indulgence.

29. The condition of praying for the intention of the Sovereign Pontiff is fully satisfied by reciting one Our Father and one Hail Mary; nevertheless, each one is free to recite any other prayer according to his piety and devotion.

31. An indulgence cannot be gained by a work, to which one is obliged by law or precept, unless the contrary is expressly stated in the grant; one, however, who performs a work which has been imposed as a sacramental penance and which happens to be one enriched with an indulgence, can at the same time both satisfy the penance and gain the indulgence.