ALL SAINTS DAY - Holy Day of Obligation

What

ALL SAINTS DAY - Holy Day of Obligation

When

11/1/2018

All Saints Day began around the year 397 as a day to honor the early Christian martyrs. During the persecution of Diocletian, the number of martyrs became so great that it was impossible to give each martyr a special day, so the Church, feeling that every martyr should be venerated, appointed a common day for all: the first Sunday after Pentecost.

This feast had a spectacular celebration in the early seventh century. After successive waves of invaders plundered the catacombs, Pope Boniface IV gathered up some 28 wagonloads of bones and reinterred them beneath the Pantheon, a Roman temple dedicated to all the gods. The pope rededicated the shrine as a Christian church on this feast day (May 13) 609. According to Venerable Bede, the pope intended "that the memory of all the saints might in the future be honored in the place which had formerly been dedicated to the worship not of gods but of demons" (On the Calculation of Time).

Early in the 8th Century, Pope Gregory III consecrated a new chapel in the Basilica of St. Peter to all saints, not just to the martyrs. This took place on November 1. This became the new date for the celebration of All Saints, and was extended to the universal church by Pope Gregory IV.

Mother Teresa: "I have to be a saint in my own way; you have to be a saint in your own way."