Chicago Canons invite Catholics to pray All Souls’ novena ahead of Mozart Requiem

The Canons Regular of St. John Cantius, a Chicago-based religious community of priests and brothers, are inviting Catholics around the world to join the final days of their Novena for All Souls. The nine days of prayer for the faithful departed end on Nov. 1, the day before the community’s annual Mozart Requiem Mass on All Souls’ Day.

The novena began October 24. Participants who sign up receive a short reflection by email each day and can read the earlier days’ reflections.

The reflections cover the Church’s teaching on death: the place the departed hold in the life of the Church, the reality of purgatory and the mercy it reveals, and how the Church accompanies the faithful as they face their own final days. The Canons say the reflections also offer practical guidance for living in light of eternity, so that death may be met “with clarity, courage, and love.”

The novena’s theme is memento mori, Latin for “remember that you will die.” The saints did not hear that call as grim, the Canons note, but as freeing: a way to set one’s life in order and hold fast to what lasts.

Praying in nines is an ancient Christian practice. It recalls the Apostles gathered with Our Lady in the Upper Room as they awaited the Holy Spirit.

“Praying for the dead is one of the spiritual works of mercy,” the Canons said. They encourage participants to bring the names of departed loved ones to prayer each day: parents and grandparents, spouses and children, friends taken too soon, and those with no one left on earth to remember them.

Throughout the novena, the community is also sharing its own history and mission to “restore the sacred” in individual lives, in the culture and in the Church. Its commitment to the Church’s liturgical and artistic tradition once revitalized St. John Cantius Parish and saved its church from demolition. Today, the Canons say, it continues to draw a growing number of young families.

The novena ends with Mozart’s Requiem, offered at a Mass according to the Roman Missal at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 2, at St. John Cantius Church. The annual liturgy draws Catholics and non-Catholics, young and old, and the congregation often spills out onto the church’s front steps.

Those who cannot attend in person are invited to unite their intentions with the Mass from wherever they are, including by livestream.