Our Duty to Pray for the Dead

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

The first reading is taken from a book of the Old Testament that is missing from the Protestant Bible. Its omission is understandable as it shows how the people of the Old Testament prayed for the deceased, a practice which is considered futile and superstitious and thus rejected by the Protestants.

The two books of Maccabees speak of a time when the Jewish homeland was ruled by the Greeks who sought every means to destroy both the local culture and suppress the people’s religion. The desecration of the holy Temple of God was the last straw when the Greeks sought to turn it into a temple rededicated to their chief pagan deity, Zeus. The Jewish nationalists rose in revolt. It was not merely a nationalistic insurrection but first and foremost, a religious war. The Jewish rebels would invoke God’s assistance to defend them and to destroy their enemies. But here in chapter 12 of the second book of Maccabees, we see the Jews offering up a different form of prayer - this time not for blood of their enemies but for reconciliation of the dead.

Although Judas won this battle, many of his soldiers were killed. When their companions went to bury them, they found that each dead soldier was wearing pagan amulets under his tunic. In the minds of the Jews, it was clear why their compatriots died despite God’s protection. But instead of abandoning their souls to perdition, Judas took a collection up among his soldiers and sent an offering to Jerusalem so that sacrifices and prayers might be offered up for his men who had sinned and fallen. All is not lost even in death and when one dies a sinner. It is here that we read an important verse for us on this day, “For if (Judas) had not expected the fallen to rise again it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead, whereas if he had in view the splendid recompense reserved for those who make a pious end, the thought was holy and devout. This was why he had this atonement sacrifice offered for the dead, so that they might be released from their sin.”

Within this most positive assessment of Judas’ deed of offering prayers and sacrifices for the dead, we have the powerful justification for two important aspects of our Catholic faith - the dogma concerning purgatory and the efficacy of praying for the dead - both, unfortunately, seem to have grown out of fashion due to a subtle transformation of the Requiem or funeral Mass into a mere memorial service where the deceased are eulogised.

In our efforts to eulogise the dead, we have forgotten that funerals are meant for sinners and not perfected saints. We celebrate feast days for saints. But the truth is that we are all imperfect and most of us die imperfect, in spite of our efforts to be better. This is the reason for believing in Purgatory. Purgatory is not a midway point between heaven and hell. Purgatory is intended for those destined for heaven. Purgatory is where souls are prepared for heaven, it is where the work of God which had begun in their lives would be completed. It is the “processing centre” where exiles wandering lost in the valley of sin and death are prepared for their final homecoming to their eternal home in heaven.

Most people believe that heaven is guaranteed, it is a done deal once they’re baptised and if they live relatively good lives. For this reason, many choose to not go for confession, seeing no need for it. But we need healing from the results of our sins, even if these sins are forgiven in confession. The results of sin do not just go away because the sin is forgiven. For example, a man might leave his wife and family and move in with another woman. His wife might be near a nervous breakdown. His children in turmoil. If ten years later, he seeks forgiveness for his actions, he can be forgiven not just by God but also by his wife. But the results of his sins remain. The children grew up devastated. Their father was not there when they needed him. His wife is still suffering the traumatic results of the end of their marriage. The sin is forgiven, but the effects of the sin remains. Reparation is required, and we are not talking about the monetary kind.

During our lives we approach the Lord seeking the healing for the results of our sins. That is why the Church promotes the gaining of indulgences which supplements the necessary practice of frequent confession. Indulgences deal with the effects of sin, the temporal punishment due to us, while confession absolves us of the guilt and the eternal punishment due to sin. When our lives on earth have ended, we depend on the prayers of those still living here to continue to ask God to heal the results of sin in our lives. And so, we do a disservice to our dead by canonising them prematurely, by deciding that no matter what their lives may have been like, they must be in heaven right now. It is a disservice because the faithful departed need our prayers. They need us to offer the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross for them–to have Masses said for them. They need us to pray the rosary asking Mary to speak to her Son for our loved ones. They need us to visit their graves, which are visible reminders of our duty to pray for them and that we continue to remain united to them in the Communion of Saints.

On this day when we commemorate all the faithful departed whom we had lost over the years, we do so not with broken hearts nor in hopeless despair. We live as a people of hope because we believe that humanity’s exile to this sin-scarred planet of crime, cruelty, injustice, and death will one day come to an end. Just as how our Lord commanded the dead son of the widow to rise up, it is our hope and prayer, that our Lord will command all the faithful departed who have died in His peace, to rise and have a share in His glory won for us on the cross.

The Books of Maccabees tell us that it is a good thing to pray for the dead. But it is more than just a recommended “good thing,” it is our duty! Our duty is to continue to pray for the dead, for the souls in Purgatory, and we do this, because this is what the Holy Spirit has taught us to do. It is a gift of God, to allow us to share in His work in bringing His people to perfection. God wills that we should share in this work through our prayers. And by praying for them, we are attesting to the truth, “life is changed, not ended” at death.

And so we pray this ancient prayer which our ancestors prayed, and we hope that our descendants would continue to do so for us:

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

The Hope of Resurrection has dawned

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

Most of us have a myopic view of reality, we often only see the small picture and are oblivious to the bigger one. We are often told by contemporary wisdom to live in the present and not dwell in the past nor should we be anxious about the future. This is a drastic mistake as it often translates into bad decisions, despair or at the other extreme, false optimism. The truth is that belief in the resurrection is what enables us to live in hope. Hope is the desire for eternal life, "placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our strength but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit" (CCC, #1817).

In certainly one of the most beautiful texts in the Roman Missal, we find these profound words meant to broaden our vision:

“In him the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned, that those saddened by the certainty of dying might be consoled by the promise of immortality to come. Indeed for your faithful, Lord, life is changed not ended, and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven” (Preface 1 of the Masses for the Dead).

Our Lord’s resurrection has brought about a new dawn of hope, the hope that one day we too shall share and partake in His resurrection and our bodies not be condemned to rot in the grave nor our souls dissipate into oblivion. This is certainly consoling for those who mourn over the death of their loved ones knowing that they have been promised immortality. St Paul exclaims this in his letter to the Corinthians: "This corruptible body must be clothed with incorruptibility, this mortal body with immortality" (1 Corinthians 15:53).

We struggle to find analogies to explain this reality, but the process of metamorphosis that changes a caterpillar into a butterfly comes to mind. The Greek word used to describe the Transfiguration of the Lord is precisely the word that has been used to explain this transformation from nature. Another analogy comes from St Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. To show continuity and discontinuity between this life and the next, Saint Paul turned to the seed and the plant. The seed buried in the ground has one form, and the plant that springs from the ground is in another form. The continuity between the seed and plant is accompanied by discontinuity or radical change. Paul uses this image to contrast the resurrected body with the physical body: what is sown corruptible will be raised incorruptible; what is sown dishonorable is raised glorious; the weak will be raised powerful (1 Corinthians 15:42-44).

But our vision is not just broadened by faith and hope to see what becomes of mortal bodies and immortal souls. We are also given a new vision of the Church as a “bigger tent”. As much as it is a popular jargon to declare that “we are the Church,” it would be pure hubris to declare that we the living faithful are the only members of the Church. We are only “a part” of the Church, a small part. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains how there are “three states of the Church … at the present time some of his disciples are pilgrims on earth. Others have died and are being purified, while still others are in glory, contemplating ‘in full light, God himself triune and one, exactly as he is'” (CCC 954). Traditionally, these three states have been referred to as the Church Militant, Church Suffering and Church Triumphant. Together, these three make up the Communion of Saints which we profess in the Creed.

As Catholics, it is not just incumbent for us to pray for the living, for their needs and protection and ultimately for their salvation, but we should also turn our prayers to the saints to ask for their intercessions. But let us never forget to pray for the dead, the members of the Church Penitent or Church Suffering. They seem to be the most neglected category in these times when man is unable to see beyond the veil and threshold of death and heaven, for many they remain a mere illusion and mystery. We need to remember the words in the Preface, that in death, “life is changed not ended.”

The idea of funerals and in this particular day in the year, specifically set aside for praying for the dead, is premised on the belief that not all persons who die will immediately go to heaven. In fact, for the vast majority of us, we would most likely be in Purgatory, even if we have lived a fairly good but far from perfect life. Rather than a downer and a wet blanket, this should be a cause for hope and joy, that heaven is not entirely denied to the imperfect but open to those who were on the path of perfection, unfinished products, but through God’s mercy and providence, are brought to that perfection through the fires of His blazing love. As St Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans which we heard in the Second Reading, this hope “is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.” It is a hope not based on human merits but the result of the sacrifice of Christ who “died for sinful men.”

It is in Christian hope that the Christian community commends the dead to the mercy and love of God for the forgiveness of their sins. The Church encourages you, therefore, to seek indulgences, pray novenas, fast, make sacrifices and have Masses said for the deceased, especially for those who have no one to pray for them. These acts of charity will increase the love of God in your heart and soul and help those who have gone before us in death. As St Ambrose reminds us, “we have loved them in life, let us not forget them in death.”

Our duty is to pray

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

News from the battle front of the Israeli-Hamas conflict has brought to the fore something which most people would rather choose to avoid or hide. Death. Where death often hides its ugly visage behind the secure walls of hospitals and retirement homes, where cadavers in coffins are dressed up to make corpses look as if they are still very much alive albeit asleep, it takes a war to show that death is more than statistics and a distant isolated reality. As family and friends grieve, others swear vengeance and retribution, and spectators look on with shock and disbelief, many have asked these question: what has become of these casualties of war and violence, some of them mere babies and children? Is there more to life after their deaths?

If there is no life after death, then all that we can do for the dead is to eulogise them in obituaries, celebrate their lives in memorial services, immortalise them by building monuments in their name or fight wars to seek justice for what has been done to them. But that is not the case. We Catholics do not merely believe that there is life after death but that the soul is immortal. Though our physical bodies experience decay in the grave, the immortal souls continue to live on until they are given new spiritual and glorified bodies at the resurrection of the dead.

That is why today’s commemoration is not just meant to be a memorial of the dead. On the contrary, today is a day when we are reminded of our primary duty to the dead. We pray for the dead, and we do this, not because they need our prayers but because this is what the Holy Spirit has taught us to do. It is a gift of God, to allow us to share in His work in bringing His people to perfection. It is a special gift of hope from God, a great divine courtesy, but it is also a great responsibility on our part.

The earliest Scriptural reference to prayers for the dead comes in the second book of Maccabees. Since Protestants reject the idea of praying for the dead, this book is not included in their canon (collection of books in the Bible). The second book of Maccabees tells how Judas Maccabee, the Jewish leader, led his troops into battle in 163 B.C. When the battle ended he directed that the bodies of those Jews who had died be buried. As soldiers prepared their slain comrades for burial, they discovered that each was wearing an amulet taken as booty from a pagan Temple. This violated the law of Deuteronomy and so Judas and his soldiers prayed that God would forgive the sin these men had committed (II Maccabees 12:39-45).

Who are the dead that we are speaking of? The Church certainly cannot be speaking of the Saints in heaven who have no need of our prayers but whose prayers we are most certainly in need of. Likewise, we cannot be praying for the souls who are suffering the eternal separation of hell. If that separation is permanent and eternal, they can never benefit from our prayers. No amount of prayers can free a soul from hell. Rather, it is the souls in purgatory whom we should be praying for. Purgatory is not a place where bad people become good people, but where good people become perfected in love. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “all who die in God’s grace, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.” (CCC 1030)

We need to pray for the dead, for the souls in Purgatory, because this is a task put into our hands. Purgatory is not a remand centre where its occupants are awaiting judgment - whether some would be set free to join the denizens of heaven or sentenced to share the lot of the souls in hell. No, purgatory is where souls are prepared for heaven, it is where the work of God begun in their lives would be completed. God wills that we should share in this work through our prayers.

Purgatory is the process after death where these attachments, the umbilical cord which binds people to the old world, are cut so that people can be free to enter into the life to come. It is the hospital where the infection of sin is eliminated. It is the incubator where heart, lungs, and vision is made ready for a much larger life. Purgatory is not a kind of temporary hell. Hell is eternal separation from God, but purgatory facilitates our eternal union with Him. That is why when we speak of the Last Things, purgatory is not included in the traditional list of four (death, judgment, heaven and hell).

The dead are blessed, and their life is a blessing for us, because they have no life but the life of God, and He is the God of the living, not of the dead. Christ died and rose again that he might become the Lord of the living and the dead, as St Paul tells us (Romans 14:9). In praying for the dead, we are not merely witnessing to the Resurrection, we are instruments of the Resurrection. And by praying for them, we are attesting to the truth, “life is changed, not ended” at death.

So, today there is no point seething over the horrifying massacres of innocents nor try to figure out the culpability of who is responsible for their deaths. Instead of being glued to the daily news of war and retribution fuelled by anger, hatred and prejudice, let us instead pause to pray. In times of war, we often pray for the living, for the survivors, for a cessation to the killing. We forget that one of the most important things that we must do is to pray for the fallen and all the dead. We can’t know for sure where the dead or our beloved deceased are, unless they happen to be canonised saints. So when in doubt, we pray for them. There is no harm, in fact, there is great benefit, to pray for them.

Resurrection, the evolutionary leap

Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

There is no empirical evidence to show us that there is life after death. Death seems to be the closing curtain on life, marking the end of life’s dramatic performance. Of course, popular genre and anecdotal testimonies tell us that the only way one survives beyond death, beyond the grave is if you return in the form of a ghostly spectre or you are reanimated as a zombie, a walking dead - basically a corpse which continues to have movement.

The idea of the resurrection is such a revolutionary thing, that most people dismiss it, even Christians and many Catholics. In fact, for many, reincarnation seems more plausible, since we all have flashes of déjà vu.

If many find our belief in the resurrection ludicrous, it was equally considered a farce by certain groups of Jews during our Lord’s time - the Sadducees. It was Holy Week when the Sadducees put the Lord to the test and hoped to make a mockery of the topic. Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection because apart from the Torah, they reject the other books of the canon which contained both prophetic and wisdom literature. References to the resurrection can be found in these other books which they did not accept. So, they tried to make the belief look ridiculous by creating this hypothetical case: A woman has seven husbands, she marries one after the other as each dies. Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?

The Sadducees believed such a situation demonstrated that people will not rise from the dead. Their scenario would make one or all of the brothers guilty of adultery if all of them were living and married to her. The Sadducees would have secretly congratulated themselves that they had trapped the Lord in a theological quandary.

And yet our Lord effortlessly deflects their attack and uses this opportunity to instruct His audience on the nature of death as well as the nature of God. Unlike the Gospel of St Matthew, St Luke does not have our Lord insult His detractors by accusing them of not knowing their scriptures nor the power of God. Our Lord goes immediately into His two-part reply.

First, the Sadducees have wrongly assumed that life in the resurrection would be exactly the same as life in this present world. There will be continuity, but there will be no marriage in the resurrection. We will be like angels, who do not get married. The Sadducees cannot refute the existence of angels because they are frequently mentioned in the Torah.

More importantly, the Sadducees were wrong about the resurrection of the dead because such evidence could even be found in the five books of Moses, the only portion of the Old Testament that the Sadducees used for their theology. Our Lord pointed to the scene of Moses before the burning bush in Exodus 3, as proof for the resurrection, noting that God introduces Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

Implicitly, our Lord argued on the basis of both the verb tense and theology - if death ended the patriarchs' existence, God would have said, "I WAS the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." God’s use of the present tense implies that they live on to worship Him. Moreover, the Lord always keeps His promises, and His promise to the patriarchs—long life in the Promised Land and descendants as numerous as the stars - can be fulfilled only if they will live forever.

God is the God of the living not only because He is the only God who is alive—the other gods being dead because they do not truly exist as gods—but also because He is the God of the living. God's relationship to His people does not end at their death, for they live on to worship Him in heaven. Because God is the God of the living, we know that all His promises to us will be kept either now, or in the world to come.

The feast of All Saints and the commemoration of All Souls which we celebrated just last week, is an affirmation of this belief. Both feasts remind us of our mortality and also immortality. We are all finite, mortal creatures and death will be our common lot. But we are also uniquely loved by God among all His creatures, and for this reason, He has endowed us with an immortal soul. Our ultimate destiny lies in God’s hands, and even death cannot separate us from His love.

Our belief in the resurrection of the dead, our resurrection, is ultimately tied to the resurrection of the Lord. Believing that the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead is essential for Christians. Merely recognising that He died for our sins is not enough; we must accept His resurrection in order to receive Eternal Life. We profess that Christ paid our debt, but His sacrifice on the cross means nothing if He possesses no power over the grave. In vanquishing evil and death, the Lord made our salvation possible. Jesus’ resurrection proved He was able to remove sin and its penalty.

Assuming Christ remained dead would mean accepting the opposite - that believers are still in sin. And the inevitable end of a sinful life is death. Consequently, a person who denies Christ’s eternal nature looks toward a void future. Bertrand Russell, a famous atheistic philosopher, offered this sad description of such hopelessness: “Brief and powerless is man’s life. On his and all his race, the slow sure doom falls, pitiless and dark.”

Instead of enjoying Christian liberty and anticipating a home in heaven, those who reject the resurrection are slaves to the present, with no real hope or meaning in life. This explains why so many are caught in the malaise of despair and hopelessness in our society today. When man no longer believes in the resurrection after death, in redemption after sin, he descends into the pit of meaninglessness. Career, family, and good works can offer brief pleasure but not the kind of joy that comes from knowing we are right with the Lord and working in His will. That is why the belief in the resurrection is not a point for theological debate. Either we believe Christ rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, or we do not. If we reject His victory over the grave, we deny ourselves a place in eternity. But if we accept the truth, Paul assures us that we will be saved.

Returning from exile

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

There’s something pitiable about the person who lives in exile. To be in a faraway place when your heart is back home can be a severe punishment and a source of discouragement. The closest many of us have been through this experience is when we were sent to our rooms by our parents as punishment or when we were separated from our families and loved ones by thousands of miles due to travel, studies or work. The feeling of homesickness is a clear symptom of someone in exile, but most of us are assured that the feeling will pass because reunion is within reach.

The people of Isaiah’s day, to whom the first reading is addressed, knew that feeling well. Theirs was the plight of the exile. They’re a long way from home, and they have “miles to go before they sleep.” But unlike many of us who are certain of a time when we will be able to return home and reunite with our loved ones, these people who lived in exile were living in the anxiety of an uncertain future. The way home seemed closed and all prospects of reunion appear to have disintegrated. The spectre of living and dying in a foreign land was very real.

For this reason, the prophecy in Isaiah 25 is to them an infinitely consoling song of liberation—an Old Testament Magnificat that anticipates real hope for a bright and glorious future. The hymn breaks into the text unexpectedly, celebrating the end of the humiliation that have befallen the Jews for so long. God is clearly on the move, having subdued the enemies of Israel and having promised to restore them to a place of peace and prominence once again. With God, even the worst exile, which is death, is only temporary. This prophecy celebrates the end of darkness and death for the covenant people.

“On this mountain,
the Lord of hosts will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food.
On this mountain he will remove
the mourning veil covering all peoples,
and the shroud enwrapping all nations,
he will destroy Death for ever.
The Lord will wipe away
the tears from every cheek;
he will take away his people’s shame
everywhere on earth,
for the Lord has said so.”

The marvelous truth is that Israel as a nation will rise again from the dead.

As is often the case with Old Testament prophecies, God, the divine Author of scriptures, could see more than the earthly author. It is not difficult to capture glimpses of a greater event and miracle in this passage—the bodily resurrection that awaits all believers at the end of the age. In fact, when Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:54 that “death is swallowed up in victory,” he’s citing Isaiah 25:8. When John writes in Apocalypse 7:17 that “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes,” and again in 21:4 that God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more,” he’s surely alluding to the same prophecy. Isaiah’s original vision exceeds all expectations.

Whereas, the Jews looked to the fulfilment of this prophecy to take place “on this mountain” and saw Mount Zion, on which Jerusalem is built, as its fulfilment, they failed to recognise that the focus of the prophecy is not the “mountain” but the “Lord of Host” who prepares the banquet, destroys death and restores our communion with God. Christ, Our Lord and Saviour, is the fulfilment of that prophecy, as we see in today’s gospel passage. In the story of the widow of Nain who is grieving over the death of her son, the encounter with the Lord Jesus turns the grieving ceremony into a celebration of life and joy, it is He who removes the mourning veil from her, who wipes away her tears, who destroys death and finally restores her son to her. She did not have to ascend the mountain to experience the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy; the mountain, Jesus, had come to her.

On this day when we commemorate all the faithful departed whom we had lost over the years, we do so not with broken hearts nor in hopeless despair. Just as how our Lord commanded the dead son of the widow to rise up, it is our hope and prayer, that our Lord will command all the faithful departed who have died in His peace, to rise up and have a share in His glory won for us on the mountain where He was crucified.

We live as a people of hope because we believe that humanity’s exile to this sin-scarred planet of crime, cruelty, injustice, and death will one day come to an end. Like Israel of old, we may continue to fail and fall in many ways, we will continue to lose our loved ones to death and one day too, we will have to reckon and accept our own mortality, but God is still God, and we can be certain that He will keep His promises:

• He will prepare a feast for His people.

• He will destroy the corpse’s shroud that enfolds us all.

• He will swallow up death forever.

• He will wipe away the tears from our faces.

• And He will remove His people’s disgrace from all the earth.

In other words, death itself will be exiled forever, and the people of God will finally be home. And the authority for such a great hope is that the Lord Himself “has said so”.

Our duty is to continue to pray for the dead, for the souls in Purgatory, and we do this, not because they need our prayers but because this is what the Holy Spirit has taught us to do. It is a gift of God, to allow us to share in His work in bringing His people to perfection. Purgatory is where souls are prepared for heaven, it is where the work of God which begun in their lives would be completed. It is the “processing centre” where exiles are prepared for their final homecoming to heaven. God wills that we should share in this work through our prayers. And by praying for them, we are attesting to the truth, “life is changed, not ended” at death.

Remember me at the altar of the Lord

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed 2021

Most of us have a myopic view of reality, we often only see the small picture and are oblivious to the bigger one. This is a drastic mistake as it often translates into bad decisions, despair or at the other extreme, false optimism. The same could be said about the average person’s view of the Church. For most of us, church refers to, the physical building in which we worship and to the more enlightened, the community of believers of Jesus Christ spread out throughout the world. In the latter understanding of the Church, we often only remember the living members and never the dead.

But traditionally, the Church sees itself as a “bigger tent” - of both the living and the dead. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains how there are “three states of the Church … at the present time some of his disciples are pilgrims on earth. Others have died and are being purified, while still others are in glory, contemplating ‘in full light, God himself triune and one, exactly as he is'” (CCC 954). Traditionally, these three states have been referred to as the Church Militant, Church Penitent (also known as Church Suffering or Church Expectant) and Church Triumphant. Together, these three make up the Communion of Saints which we profess in the Creed.

In our eagerness to eulogise the dead, we often end up with the mistake of neglecting our duty of praying for the souls in Purgatory, the members of the Church Penitent or Church Suffering. For if our loved ones are already in heaven, they have no need of our prayers. Instead, we pray to those who are in heaven, the Saints, and ask for their intercession. Our funeral Masses would then be redundant since we can already start celebrating the death of our departed brother and sister as a feast.

If you find this ridiculous and even irreverent, then there is still hope. You’ve not entirely lost your Catholic sensibility. The idea of funerals and this particular day in the year, specifically set aside for praying for the dead, is premised on the belief that not all persons who die will immediately go to heaven. In fact, for the vast majority of us, we would most likely be in Purgatory, even if we have lived a fairly good but far from perfect life.

Of course, many people believe that by thinking or speaking of their loved ones in purgatory would mean sullying their memory. This is based on the belief that purgatory is often seen as some kind of negative judgment on the deceased - that the person was far from perfect, that he or she had feet of clay. But rather than a negative judgment, our belief that souls are being purified in purgatory is a positive judgment and one of hope. It means that though persons may not be perfect, there is still hope of their redemption in the ongoing work of God. As St Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans which we heard in the Second Reading, this hope “is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.” It is a hope not based on human merits but the result of the sacrifice of Christ who “died for sinful men.”

Thus, the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that “all who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven” (CCC 1030). Souls in purgatory are destined for heaven! Once a soul is purified in purgatory, the baggage of sin and earthly attachments are gone, and they are able to love as God loves and enter into eternal union with Him.

Many of us live with the guilt of not having done enough for our departed loved ones when they were alive. We want to make it up to them but death has robbed us of the opportunity to do so, or that is what we think. In his “Confessions,” St Augustine remembers his mother dying and his brother expressing his concern to St Monica that she would die outside of Rome, rather than in her native country in Africa. St Monica looked at her sons, and said: “Bury my body wherever you will; let not care of it cause you any concern. One thing only I ask you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.” Monica was not concerned about the location or ostentatiousness of her tomb. She had only one wish, that her son, now an ordained priest, should offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the eternal repose of her soul.

We, too, should make praying for the dead a priority, since it is an act of mercy and love for those who can no longer purify themselves through their growth in the virtues here on earth. This is what our departed loved ones need from us - not stirring and moving eulogies nor memorials, tributes and imposing tombs. If our departed loved ones could speak from beyond the grave, we would most likely hear something similar to what St Monica had requested from her sons, “One thing only I ask you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.” For those who feel guilty for not having done their best for their loved ones before their death, this is an opportunity to make up for lost time and effort. This too, is what the Lord desires of us. The Lord in His patience, desires salvation for all and that we love as He loves.

The Church encourages you, therefore, to seek indulgences, pray novenas, fast, make sacrifices and have Masses said for the deceased, especially for those who have no one to pray for them. These acts of charity will increase the love of God in your heart and soul and help those who have gone before us in death. As St Ambrose reminds us, “we have loved them in life, let us not forget them in death.”

Memento Mori

Commemoration of the Faithful Departed

On my recent trip to France, I had the opportunity of visiting one of the most wondrous places on earth – an abbey-fortress built on a tiny island – Mont St Michel. At high tide, the sea surrounds Mont St-Michel, making it an impenetrable fortress surrounded by a natural moat, and at low tide this same water recedes as much as 11 miles from the Abbey. There are so many wonders that I can tell you about this beautiful Romanesque structure but one detail in particular caught my attention. Our guide pointed to what remained of a 13^th century fresco that once covered the entire wall of the infirmary – the place where sick monks came to be healed and where they died. What remains are three solemn and macabre figures – knights in various stages of aging and dying with the last a skeletal figure. The guide told us that what would have been painted on the other side of the wall were three other knights displaying youth, vigour and good health. Both sets of figures would be depicted as having a conversation. The one on the right (the deathly figures) reminding the other group (the healthy robust ones), that one day, the latter too will have to join the ranks of the former. It then occurred to me that this fresco was a “memento mori,” a memorial of death, that not all who pass through the doors of the infirmary will return the same way. Not all will recover. Death eventually comes to all.

Death is an amazing corrective to our disordered world, a world marred by the unfairness of discrimination, injustice, a growing and widening disparity between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, the privileged and the disenfranchised. But then death comes to all, young and old, rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless. Death does not discriminate. It has this sign hung above its main gate, “INGREDIMVR CVNCTI, DIVES CVM PAVPERE MIXTVS”, “All Enter, the Rich and Poor Alike.” In the face of the delusion that our safety, sense of peace and stability is finally secured, comes the important reminder that hits us whenever we face death, “memento Mori,” “remember death”, and then everything is put into perspective once again.

Today’s liturgy is such a day – a day to remember the dead, a day to remember death. I honestly believe that nothing can be more graphic than the Spanish name used by the Mexicans, “Dia de los Muertos”, the Day of the Dead. Our traditional “All Souls Day” and the current, “the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed”, seems muted in comparison. Perhaps, this is due to our Anglophone preoccupation with substituting hard words and concepts with euphemisms. But by whatever name it is known, today is a day to remember the dead, a day to remember death. Think about it - this entire day is a “memento mori” for the living. The dead may have departed this world of ours, but they still stand as silent reminders of the path and door which we all must pass one day. They issue this warning, “Remember us, for one day you too will join our ranks.”

The whole business of memento mori is said to have begun as a part of the ritual of welcome given to Roman military leaders upon their return from victory in battle. Amid the cheers of adoring crowds, a slave was designated to approach the great general and intone: “Respice post te, hominem te memento” (“Look around! Remember you’re only a man!”). Mortal like the rest of us. Our achievements, our trophies, our monuments will one day all be reduced to dust. What remains is the immortal soul, therefore we should pay due attention to its health, to our spiritual and moral health, rather than just be concerned with our physical and material needs.

We have a bit of this, of course, every Ash Wednesday: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The reminder is a good one, and sometimes an impetus to head to Confession, because, as our Lord reminds us, “Therefore, stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” A certain amount of procrastination in life is okay, but not in this regard. We should never put off any opportunity to repent, to amend our ways, because “we know neither the day nor the hour.” It’s a reminder that the art of living well ought necessarily become the art of dying well.

We’re familiar with Christ’s admonition to be “in the world but not of it,” but we are also aware that too frequently, we seem to be lost to this world and all its allures. We delay any preparation for that final moment, sometimes even denying it, perhaps, living under the illusion (or delusion) that we and our works, our accomplishments, our trophies, are dipped in the waters of the River Styx, our invincibility secured. But it is this blindness that has become the Achilles’ heel of so many. In failing to face death, in choosing to forget that we are merely mortals, many have lost that opportunity to turn the story around.

Yes, immortality is within our reach. But its answer is not to be found in denial or other false substitutes. The secret of immortality is to be found in Christ alone, the One who died but who rose again, the One who conquered death through His loving self-sacrifice on the cross. Repentance, turning to our Lord, is what makes this elixir accessible to all, even to the most hardened sinner. So, today, is not just a day to remember the dead and to remember death. It is crucially important to remember Christ too.

Yes, today as the Church commemorates the death of all the faithful departed, today as we remember our loved ones who have passed, it is time to remember - “memento Mori.” It is a reminder that life is always a joust with Death, a spar with our mortality. It is an unfair match. Death is so much more powerful than the most powerful on this earth, even those who command armies and empires will finally have to bend their knee and acknowledge defeat at the end of their battle. But if one has died in Christ, if one has chosen to continue dying to himself in order that he may be configured more to Christ, then the tide can be turned, the outcome can be rewritten, the victory can be secured. With Christ by our side, we have no more fear of death, for we know that we will come out not as losers or the defeated, but as victors! Oblivion or perdition need not be the destiny of every mortal. The Church Triumphant, the company of all saints which we celebrated yesterday, awaits us.

Our loved ones, our friends, our brothers and sisters have died. Each has finished his or her respective race. Their battle with death has concluded. What is the outcome, we do not know with certainty but we can only hope and pray that it ends in victory, the victory which Christ promised to those who listen to His words and adhere to them. We cannot know the exact moment of our dying, but we can live in recognition of that moment, in readiness. If you wish to remember your loved ones and all the faithful departed today, first remember death.

Purged by Love

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

Yesterday we remembered all the saints, both named and unnamed. Today, we remember those who have passed from this life with faith, hope and trust in the promise of eternal life. It is so much easier to just simply believe that those in the second category automatically fall into the first that is, all our departed loved ones are already in heaven and enjoying beatific vision. But that is something we can only hope for and can never be certain unless the Church definitively declares them saints, what we call canonisation.

At the root of today’s commemoration is the question: What happens to us when we die? If our belief is that death is the end, then it doesn’t make any difference: there is nothing more. This, of course, is not our belief as Catholics. We believe that the life of every individual matters to God. We believe that there is life-after-death; we believe in the Resurrection; we believe that when we die, the person we are lives on; the person does not die; and we believe that this person will live for all eternity, eventually with a resurrected body – just like our Lord Jesus Christ.

Many of us here are carrying the memory of a deceased spouse, parent, child, or best friend deep in our hearts. It is our wish, it is our desire, it is our hope, and for some, it is even our belief, that our loved ones are “in peace” in Heaven, as the Book of Wisdom so comfortingly assures us. But the truth is that we do not know this for a fact. Canonisation involves a long and stringent process of determining whether someone is in heaven or not. But very often, at the time of the death of a person, we can never come to that conclusion with absolute certainty. We should avoid a widespread heresy that is so prevalent today, that hell does not exist and presumes that basically everyone and anyone who dies somehow automatically gets upgraded to heaven no matter what life they lived here on earth. If this be the case than what we’re doing today at this Mass and what we do at every funeral would be basically a big waste of time.

So, what is the proper attitude we should have toward the salvation of those we know who have died? The first thing is that we shouldn’t judge them. With our finite capacities, we cannot know what’s really in another’s heart. We see appearances but only God sees the heart. In some cases, we extend funerals even to those who commit suicide because we don’t know what was in the person, that led to the decision. The only time we do refuse funeral is when the person made it absolutely clear that he was doing it for reasons contrary to the Catholic faith. On the other hand, we’re not to judge people to be saints in heaven either. A person might seem to be a great father or a loving mother, or a generous philanthropist, but we might not know of their dark hidden secrets or ulterior motives. For that reason, we, as Catholics, leave all the judging to God. And because we don’t know, we hope for their salvation and we pray for their salvation.

That is why praying for the dead is so important. When we say that we pray for the dead, we are ultimately saying that we believe in this reality called purgatory. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of misunderstanding concerning this doctrine. Some have thought that we “go” to purgatory and then, we are judged as to whether we go to heaven or hell. Others see this as a mini-hell for those who didn't quite make it all the way into heaven. If purgatory is a mini-hell, it explains why so many people choose to canonise the dead as if this was a quick “Get out of Jail” bonus card. 

So what is purgatory? To begin with, let's look at the word “purgatory” which comes from the old Latin word “purgare,” which means “to cleanse” or “to purge.” So you can think of purgatory as a time of cleansing or final purification in preparation to spend eternity in the presence of God. Citing Pope Gregory the Great, the Catholic Church teaches that “all who die in God’s grace, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.” (CCC 1030)

The next question is why is purgatory necessary? Can’t we just get to heaven as we all hope to one day? Well, the Church teaches that to enter heaven, one must be completely attached to God and radically detached from all sin and everything that is not of God. “Nothing unclean shall enter heaven” (Rev. 21:27). There are many who do not live and die with that type of purity of life and hence they need to be purified to enter into the kingdom in which God is all in all. So what about people who say a fundamental “yes” to God, but drag their feet, clinging to some “small” sins, nursing some attachments to the evil that they’ve supposedly renounced?  Purgatory is the process after death where these attachments, the umbilical cord which binds people to the old world, are cut so that people can be free to enter into the life to come.  It is the hospital where the infection of sin is eliminated.  Purgatory is not a kind of temporary hell. Hell is eternal separation from God, but purgatory facilitates our eternal union with Him.

The next question which follows, did the Church just make this all up? Is this teaching about praying for the dead and purgatory unbiblical and just man-made? The answer is definitely no. The teaching on purgatory and praying for the dead finds its source in scriptures. The earliest Scriptural reference to prayers for the dead comes in the second book of Maccabees. Since Protestants reject the idea of praying for the dead, this book is not included in their canon (collection of books in the Bible). The second book of Maccabees tells how Judas Maccabee, the Jewish leader, led his troops into battle in 163 B.C. When the battle ended he directed that the bodies of those Jews who had died be buried. As soldiers prepared their slain comrades for burial, they discovered that each was wearing an amulet taken as booty from a pagan Temple, a violation of the Law. So Judas and his soldiers prayed that God would forgive their sins.

Second Maccabees tells us, very succinctly, “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they might be loosed from their sins” (2 Macc 12:45). The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “From the beginning the Church has honoured the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God. The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead” (CCC 1032). In God’s plan of salvation, our deeds of love offered in union with Christ’s own sacrifice may help others. Christ calls us to be co-redeemers with Him. Just as His passion, death and resurrection brought salvation to the whole human race, so our deeds of love united to His, by God’s own design, can help those who have gone before us. It is a spiritual work of mercy.

Let’s be honest. The vast majority of us will not go immediately to heaven after judgment because we’re not living as true saints in this world but are regularly making compromises with our faith. And because of this, the vast majority of people will need prayers after they die. We would need a lot of prayers. So we need to take these things seriously – our funeral liturgy is meant to worship God and beg His mercy for the dead and not an opportunity to glorify or canonise the dead. We need to start offering masses for the dead because there is no greater prayer, there is no greater sacrifice, than the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which re-presents the Sacrifice of Our Lord on Calvary. It’s time to visit the graves of our loved ones, not just to remember them but to pray for them, not just once a year but as often as possible. As St Ambrose of Milan taught us, “We loved them in life, let us not forget them in death.”