Deacon David leading the service
Sandakan :Today, 2nd November is All Souls Day, which follows All Saints Day. Parishioners gathered at the Sibuga Catholic Cemetery this morning at 9.00 am for the solemn blessing of the cemetery by Deacon David A Garaman assisted by Sr Veronica Kandaung fsic and extraordinary ministers.
 

 

 The Church prays for, and remembers, the faithful departed throughout the entire year. However, All Souls is the general, solemn, day of commemoration, when the Church remembers, prays for, and offers the mass up for the faithful departed in the state of purification. Typically Christians will take this day to offer prayers up on behalf of their departed relatives and friends and spend time at the their tombs in the cemetery.

 
Later, in the evening at 7.30 pm, Bishop Julius presided over  All Souls Day Mass at the Cathedral and in his homily said that yesterday, on All Saints’ Day, we glorified the Saints and today we commemorate all the faithful departed, those “who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith”. .
It’s very important for us Christians to live our relationship with the dead in the truth of faith, and to look at death and the afterlife. 
The prelate called on the parishioners to always prepare for eternal life and that calls for acts of charity to the poor and needy as in Matthew 25 : 31, “Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of My brothers, you have done it unto Me.”and receiving Christ as in John 6 : 53  “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. and you shall have eternal life”.
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