“Are you unaware,” Saint Paul asks the Christians of ancient Rome, that you were baptized into Christ’s death?1 Death is a fact of life. But Christ has overcome death. In baptism we die, are buried, and rise with Christ to new life, to life everlasting. This is why Christians shouldn’t fear death. It is, therefore, fitting that our Paschal Candle is lit tonight.
Just as baptism is the fundamental sacrament, belief in Christ’s death and resurrection is the basis, the cornerstone of Christian faith. But a Christian does not believe that Christ’s rising from the dead is a one-off event. S/he believes that by dying, being buried, and rising with Christ through the waters of baptism s/he, too, has died and risen.
Resurrection and redemption are the themes of All Souls Day. Just as All Saints is a day to celebrate all saints, particularly those holy women and men who even now enjoy God’s presence but who are not canonized, on All Souls we commemorate all the faithful departed, perhaps especially those who have no one to remember them. This is why we have our memorial book at the foot of the chancel and we read the names before Mass. Today is Catholic Memorial Day.
Commemoration is different from mourning. We don’t gather this evening to mourn. We gather to celebrate. We don’t really gather to celebrate our beloved dead, but to remember them. We gather to celebrate the hope we have because Jesus Christ conquered death, even if this does not now seem to be the case.
Christ our hope enables us to pray for those who have died. Very often and understandably we auto-canonize the dead, at least publicly, making them saints a bit prematurely, or, in recent years, with a persistent form of gnosticism in the ascendent, thinking they become some kind of disembodied astral being or angels. We are not angels because we are not disembodied. We are embodied and will be so throughout eternity. After all, we believe in the Son’s incarnation and in bodily resurrection.
As Catholics, we believe that in most instances our journey back to God continues after death. On this journey, according to Church teaching, most people pass through Purgatory. We make a mistake, however, if we think of Purgatory as a hellish place, a place of torment and horror. In her lovely Treatise on Purgatory, Saint Catherine of Genoa describes the so-called “fire” of Purgatory as an inner fire. For Catherine, this is the fire of human desire, the very desire that make us and that finds its satisfaction in God alone. We are made for God and it is God, who is love, whom we desire. To paraphrase Saint Augustine: our hearts are restless until they rest in God.
Maybe because God, at times, seems far away or even absent, it is easy to believe that other things, even things that are not bad in themselves, or other people are what we truly want and need. This is what we often find so very dissatisfying about life in a transitory world, a world in which even our closest relationships don’t and can't last continuously forever. For example, our marriage vows only bind us until death. For, if we listen to the Lord and not to other, strange voices that contradict revelation: “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage."2 If nothing else, and there is plenty else in a broken world, death disrupts.
You should be similarly suspicious of those who claim to have crystal clear ideas about life after death. As Saint Paul intimated by quoting Isaiah:
What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him3What theologian David Tracy observed gets to the heart of the matter:
our beloved dead, whose fates no one really knows, are painfully invisible to us now. Indeed, the dead possess a unique form of invisibility: the dead are presently absent and absently present. When Dante first experiences the underworld and sees so many dead persons he once knew well in life, he exclaims, 'I did not know that death had undone so manyHe concludes this thought by writing: "We all know the feeling."4
By Hieronymus Bosch
As a result, our desires need to be re-directed toward the One who truly satisfies. Only then can our other relationships be restored and placed on solid footing. This purgation, according to Saint Catherine, is not torment. In her Treatise, she puts it this way:
I believe no happiness can be found worthy to be compared with that of a soul in Purgatory except that of the saints in Paradise; and day by day this happiness grows as God flows into these souls, more and more as the hindrance to His entrance is consumed5Commemoration of the dead is an act of love. Love is what gathers us tonight around this altar: the love of God given us in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit and, flowing from that, our love for those who have died. So, while we aren’t here to mourn, we are here to once again commend the souls of the faithful departed to the mercy of God whose name is Mercy.
Commendation has three main meanings: to formally praise someone, to present as suitable for acceptance (recommend), and to entrust. Indeed, we praise the dead for the good they did and for the love they gave. It is Christ who presents them and who will present us to the Father as suitable for acceptance. It is us who entrust them to God, which is what we're here to do on the solemn day.
By his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ reconciles us with the Father. We pray in the second Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation, asking the Father to graciously “endow us with [Christ’s] very Spirit.” It is the Holy Spirit, this prayer continues, “who takes away everything that estranges us from one another.”6 What estranges more for each other than death? By participating in Mass, you are united with the entire Body of Christ: on earth, in heaven, and in Purgatory. Don’t forget, according to the Church, Purgatory is populated by people who are ultimately bound for glory.
We can extend this communion beyond our celebration tonight by praying for the dead. Even now, consider obtaining indulgences for them to help them on their way. By obtaining these on their behalf, you are like the Good Samaritan, who helps the man beaten, robbed, and left for dead to be healed and to complete his journey. These practices and beliefs are not outmoded or outdated.
Tonight, we express our faith in Jesus Christ, who teaches that it is the will of the Father that everyone who believes in him shall have eternal life and be raised on the last day.7 The Eucharist, it has been noted, is the medicine of immortality. It is this faith that generates hope and enables us to journey through the valley of death, fearing no evil.8 As Saint Paul asks further on in his Letter to the Romans:
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?9
1 Romans 6:3.↩
2 Matthew 22:30.↩
3 1 Corithians 2:9.↩
4 David Tracy, Fragments: The Existential Situation of Our Time, Collected Essays, Vol 1., 36.↩
5 Saint Catherine of Genoa. Treatise on Purgatory, Chapter II.↩
6 Roman Missal. Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation II, sec. ↩
7 John 6:40.↩
8 Psalm 23:4.↩
9 Romans 8:31-32.↩
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