In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence.

I ask your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful.

My Immaculate Mother St. Joseph, my father and Lord,

my guardian angel, intercede for me.

With your permission, Lord Jesus Christ,

truly present with us in the blessed sacrament,

we ask you, Lord, to help us contemplate this mystery of faith that perhaps in an immediate sense

causes us to draw a blank.

Our topic of prayer on occasion of the month of November, it's a month that

the church utilizes so that we contemplate the last things, that's the traditional word or

the eternal truths of death, judgment, heaven, hell, purgatory. And the doctrine behind the communion

of saints is that the church exists in this world, in this present world, and in the next.

The most effective members of the church are those who actually contemplate

God directly, the church in heaven, before it was called the church triumphant. But also part of the

church, and they're banking on our help, on our charity, is the church

suffering, the church in purgatory. And the church on earth, the pilgrim church, the traditional

word or phrase is the church militant, not in a violent sense or a warfare sense,

but in a struggle to conform one's life to the life of Jesus and through deeds of love and charity

to win people over to Christ. St. Paul, in the earliest years of the church's history, in one of the earliest documents

of the New Testament and his letter to the Corinthians, he teaches, if one member suffers,

...