As we all know, the practice pf praying and sacrifice for the
dead goes back to the Jewish custom of sacrifice for the dead.
This custom of prayers and sacrifices for the dead predate the
birth of our Lord Christ in Bethlehem. We find an explicit Old
Testament description and exhortation of prayer and sacrifice
for the dead in 2 Maccabees 12:42-26. Moreover, all the Church
Fathers testify to the practice of praying for the dead in the
Eucharistic liturgy. Praying for the dead an example of one of
the most ancient Christian customs - older than Christmas, older
than church buildings, even older than the New Testament itself.
But what about this special day, All Souls, on which we pray and
sacrifice for the dead in a special way? We find an account of
its origins in the writings of Saint Peter Damian, who records
the following story. In the 900s, there was a French pilgrim
returning from the Holy Land who was shipwrecked on an island
with a cave from which belched heat and gas (maybe a volcano of
some sort). Th