With All Souls’ Day Masses this week, I have death and the dead on my mind. One of the marks of true Christian faith is that we do not fear death. Jesus conquered death through his resurrection and promised a similar victory to us through baptism and faith, so Christians throughout the centuries have been able to mock death along with St. Paul:
And when this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality, then the word that is written shall come about: “Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:54-55)
Nevertheless, our hope in ultimate victory does not mean that we do not feel the sadness of loss or that we do not long to reconnect with the ones that we love. The Church’s funeral rituals (of which All Souls’ Day is an elevated expression) profoundly bridge this tension between the experience of loss on Earth and the hope of immortality in the world to come.
Two tangentially related, practical notes:
- Please, in your own lives and in your families, do not lose the practice of praying for the dead. Anyone who dies believing in the Lord, but who is imperfectly united to him in any way (through sin, vice, etc.) – which is 99.99% of us – must go through a period of purgation before eternal beatitude. Our prayers assist the dead in this process! As much as we love those that we have lost and want to think the best of them, it is a tragedy to assume that they went immediately to Heaven, because that denies them the prayers that they need to get through Purgatory first. Please, please, please, for their sake, pray for them at their graves and offer Masses for them around special anniversaries. I shudder to think of all the people who have no one to pray for them in Purgatory.
- Please make your death plans known to your loved ones. Especially in an era where so many of our children are leaving the faith, there are more and more faithful Catholics who are being denied funerals and burials and it absolutely breaks my heart. I understand where these children are coming from: apart from faith, a funeral is just a sad party and a burial is just an expensive tradition which is no longer in vogue – and both are unnecessary. “How much more meaningful to remember Mom by going to see a show together (she loved the theater!) or to honor Dad by spreading his ashes on his favorite fishing lake.” Or, worse, children who struggle with grief try to create their own grieving rituals, which often make things worse: keeping ashes on the mantle, dividing ashes between siblings, or compressing ashes into jewelry which can be worn around as a keepsake (there is no finality to these rituals, like there is to burial, so they never really let go and properly grieve). Do yourself a favor and buy your plot now and make it explicit that you want a Catholic funeral Mass. Praying for and burying the dead are spiritual and corporal works of mercy that the Church desperately wants to extend to her children, but I have no power to do so if those plans are not made explicit before death.
Fr. Moore 