The article of the month

This Month… by Teresa Caldecott Cialini

We march towards the end of this liturgical year accompanied by “all the Saints who from their labours rest” (as the popular hymn goes). The Solemnity of All Saints is transferred to Sunday, 2 November this year in all three national calendars of our edition, so you will find the vigil “Blessings” we usually feature in our October issue here instead. All Souls Day falls this year on the 3rd (shifted to follow All Saints as usual). On the 8th, our Welsh readers also cele­brate All Saints of Wales, while our Scottish readers commemorate their notable philosopher-friar, Blessed John Duns Scotus. These, and all the other wonderful Saints featured this month, are beacons of light in the gloom of the dwindling year. They are living examples of the call in the Letter to the Ephesians (5:8): at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.

You may recall the excerpt from Houselander’s The Reed of God which we printed back in September about that Light of which we are children. She points out that Christ is both the life-giving light of the sun, the transcendent light of the guiding star, and the tiny—but necessary—light of the candle in the dark room. Candlelight can make all the difference as winter draws in; with dwindling sunlight and the focus on prayers for the souls in purgatory and remembrance of those who have died in wars, it is heavy time of year. The Holy Father’s prayer intention for November 2025 relates to the struggle against despair: he asked us to pray particularly for the prevention of suicide. With suicide reportedly now the single leading cause of death for men under 50 in the United Kingdom and the third leading cause of death among 15 to 29 year olds globally, this could not be a more urgent cause. “Let us pray that those who are struggling with suicidal thoughts might find the support, care, and love they need in their community, and be open to the beauty of life.”

He Has Not Hidden His Face

Despair is both a side effect of sin in the world, and a fertile soil in which sin can thrive. The devil can weaponise this against those weakened by pain. Christ himself acknow­ledged this battle when he quoted Psalm 22 in Matthew 27:46, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When you are in the midst of suffering—especially relentless, long-term suffering—the darkness can seem all-encompassing, unconquerable. Even if you assent on an intellectual level, alongside Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, that evil is “less real” than good because it exists only in relation to the good that it corrupts or lacks, that does not mean it always feels this way.

But this wound to the good creation that God made out of love is taken on by him in a very concrete way in the Passion and Death of his Son, giving us access to the theological virtue of hope through his glorious Resurrection. As we conclude this year as Pilgrims of Hope, perhaps we can see how the regular exercise of this “muscle” can make it stronger when the greatest challenges arrive. How does the Psalmist conclude that Psalm (22) which speaks so painfully about despair? He has not despised or abhorred/ the affliction of the afflicted,/ and he has not hidden his face from him,/ but has heard, when he cried to him….

Christ the King of the Universe, celebrated on Sunday 23rd, has invited us into his Kingdom, as an “Easter people” (Saint John Paul II). All the ends of the earth shall remember/ and turn to the Lord,/ and all the families of the nations/ shall worship before you./ For kingship belongs to the Lord,/ and he rules over the nations (Ps 22:27-28). We must strive to remember that the Light­—the Good—is in fact more real than the darkness, and, as the quote from Ephesians 5 continues, the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true.

Until the End of Time

The cover art for this month’s edition is based on the ancient icon of Christ Pantocrator, “Ruler of All”, from the monastery of Saint Catherine of Alexandria (whose memorial is on 25 November), on Mount Sinai. Founded near the discovery of that saint’s remains, the site encloses the “Well of Moses” where Moses is said to have met his future wife (still one of the monastery’s main sources of water), and also the Burning Bush (a self-renewing bramble that has been venerated as such since before the monastery’s founding). The site is considered sacred by all three major Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), and the monastery’s library is recognised by the Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest continuously operating library. This holy site is under threat now, but if we look on the famous icon of Christ that it contains, we are reminded that the deep, all-seeing eyes of the Word Incarnate accompany Christians even through the darkest of times.

On the last day of November, we arrive at the first day of Advent, and the beginning of Year A in our cycle of Sunday readings. In these last weeks with the Gospel of Luke, “the beloved physician” reminds us how Jesus sought to prepare us for times of crisis. On Saint Catherine’s feast, in the readings for the last week of Ordinary Time, we are made to confront the worst: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven” (Lk 21:10-11). But our Lord does not leave his followers unresourced­—far from it. The conviction that, in spite of trials, he will be with us, even to the end of time, can steady us today, just as it encouraged his earliest disciples.