The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed
Preached at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Previous Years: 2022 || 2021 || 2020 || 2019 || 2018 || 2017
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/your-prayers-matter/
Transcript
This may seem like too silly a way to start a homily at a Mass where we are wearing black vestments and talking about death, but…in the TV show Lambchop, there is a song that has been stuck in my head for about 30 years, and it goes like this: “This is the song that never ends. It goes on and on, my friends.” Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was, and then they kept on singing it forever because this is the song that never ends. It has been stuck in my head because I was a child, but also because it’s the only way I can explain the development of Catholic theology. It just works so well. Catholics from the beginning, from Jesus, started doing something that we didn’t understand, and then we just kept on doing it. And over time, theology caught up with it. Over time, we realized, okay, this is a practice of our Church. It’s inspired by Jesus Christ. It’s guided by the Holy Spirit. There’s got to be a reason for it. What is that reason? And then the scholastics get a hold of it, and they make all these distinctions, and it’s this beautiful theology. But it just started with some people doing some stuff, and then we realize this is probably from the Holy Spirit.
Well, in this case, the stuff that we were doing was praying for the dead. Somebody would die, and we would pray for them. We’ve been doing it from the beginning. We’ve been doing it since before Jesus. In this reading from the Book of Maccabees, there is a battle between the Greeks and the Jews, and the Jews are victorious all through the book. But for whatever reason, at this battle, they lose a bunch of people. When they go to bury the dead, they realize that all of these people had amulets on for an idol—that God had allowed these people to die because they were no longer under His protection. They were worshipping false gods. But instead of disowning them, instead of saying, “Oh, these are not of us, we’re not going to bury them,” Judas Maccabeus not only buries them, but he sends money to the temple so that a sacrifice would be offered for them. He realized that they were imperfect people, that they died in an imperfect state, but that if he prayed for them, that if he offered sacrifice for them, it would be for their benefit. It’s a human impulse. Every culture does some form of this praying for the dead. The Jews did it here in the Book of Maccabees. The Catholics have done it since Jesus.
But the Book of Maccabees says something really important. It says, In doing this he acted very well in honorably taking account of the resurrection. For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen asleep would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. We might do something that is superfluous and foolish—Catholics have done plenty of things that seem superfluous and foolish—but this was adopted by the Church very quickly as a sign of the impulse of the Holy Spirit, because we believe that it did something. If we thought that people died and that was it, it would be stupid for us to pray for the dead. Similarly, if we thought that our prayers did nothing for the dead, if they were already completely taken care of, it would be stupid for us to pray for the dead. But the fact that we’ve been doing it for 2,500 years—if you follow this timeline—means that there must be something that it does; it must not be superfluous and foolish. Our dead, the ones that we love, the ones that we have lost, somehow, by the grace and providence of God, benefit from our prayers. If it is built into our human nature that this is something we should do, then it is a necessary and good thing for us to do. For us to be here together at this Mass, not just to remember but to pray for those that we’ve lost, there has got something important about this. It does mean something. And I know it means something because every night when I go to bed, I know that I am not going to bed perfect. Every night when I go to bed, I have a list of all the ways in which I am not the man that God created me to be; the ways I have fallen short; the ways that I need to wake up tomorrow and improve and get better. Knowing when I go to bed that the Lord may take me that night would be terrifying if I thought I needed to be perfect before the Lord took me. It is a mercy to all of us that the Lord would give us time, even after death, to find the perfection that we all desire. That if there’s something in my soul that I haven’t resolved yet in this life, that He would give me time in the next life to figure that out. I am so thankful that the Lord would allow me to work on myself even after death. And so, the first thing that our prayers do is they assist our beloved in that purgation. Just as today, if you were to come up to me and ask for my prayers because you’re struggling with something, I would 100% pray for you. The same is true of those in my family that I’ve lost. I assume they didn’t die perfect, and so I assume when I pray for them, it is doing something for them, that it is giving them some sort of relief. It is helping them become perfect faster and assisting them in their spiritual journey. Just as we assisted them in their spiritual journey here on earth, our prayers mean something for those that we have lost; it is a help that they will thank you for at the end of their lives. But it is also a mercy in another sense. It is a mercy for us because the nature of love is other focused. Love is not a feeling. Love is wanting to do something for that person; I want to act for that person’s good. And so, it is an incredible mercy that the Lord would ordain from the beginning of our existence, that our prayers for the dead would be good and beneficial, because our love has to go somewhere. If I’m going to say that I love those that I have lost, that love has to do something for them. That is the definition of love. It can’t just be a feeling that I sit with; it has to be an action that I take. If I pray for the dead, it does something for them. The love that I am pouring out for the people that I’ve lost, the people that I miss, the people that I think about all the time isn’t hitting a brick wall. That love is doing something for them; my love is going somewhere. If I were to pour out my love against a brick wall that would be mean of the Lord. But the fact that He made it such that I can love those that I’ve lost, even after their death—and that love is still beneficial to them, that love is still a mercy to them, that love is still a help to them—well, that’s beautiful. It is beautiful that the Lord would make it so. It is beautiful that the Lord would allow us to love even after death. Death is not the end. Death is a change. Our love does not end when we lose them. The form of it changes. We can’t touch them; we can’t hug them. We can’t necessarily converse with them, although I still will talk to my dead relatives, knowing that they can hear me even if I can’t hear back. But that love continues, and it continues in our prayers. It continues with you being here tonight in this beautiful act of love and mercy for those that you have lost. The Lord maintains our communion with the dead. They’re not gone. They’re still with us. The Lord maintains that love today. I thank you tonight for being here, for praying for them. And I promise you and it’ll be such an incredible moment of joy and relief when you meet them again in the next life. They will thank you for the prayers and the love that you’ve shown them, even after you lost them to this world.
Fr. Moore 