Why do we pray
for our deceased loved ones? Why do we
have this celebration today, the Commemoration of All Souls?[1]
Why do we dedicate the month of November to praying for the dead? Why do we
have funeral Masses? Well, we do all these things because we believe in the
power of prayer. We believe that our continual entreaty to God to bring our
loved ones to peace will prepare them to bear the fullness of His Love in
heaven.
We pray because
we believe in love. We believe that true love, the love that flows from God and
returns to Him, true love remains forever. We sincerely loved the members of
our family, our friends and all who have died. And we still love them. This
love which is looking for nothing other than to express itself is sacrificial
love. It is loving as Jesus loved. We are not expecting anything in return. We
just want to express our love others. We
do this through prayer.
And God hears
our prayers and sees the love motivated by those who have died. Some of these loved ones are fully united to Him
now. They are the saints, be they
canonized by the Church, babies and little children, or older children, Teens
and adults all who died with lives so pure, so sincere, that they are ready to
endure the blaze of His Love.
Some of our
loved ones are not ready to enter into His Presence. The results of their sins
are still affecting them. Just like an arm broken many years ago still hurts
when the weather changes, the deceased who is forgiven his or her sins still
suffers the result of the sin. But God’s
love is motivated by the love this person inspired in others, seen in their
constant prayer. These prayers lead Him to heal the results of sin or as we say
in the terminology of the Church, to free them from Purgatory. This was
presented beautifully and succinctly by Dante Alighieri in the second book of his
Divine Comedy, The Purgatorio. There
he presents the souls in purgatory as holding themselves back from climbing the
mountain of God until they are able to accept the fullness of His Love. They are dependent on the prayers of their
loved ones still on earth to prepare them to receive the fire of God’s love[2].
The power of
prayer is far greater, infinitely greater than we could ever imagine. Often
when we pray we call on the strength of the Almighty One to perform an action
beyond our capabilities, but not beyond His.
Today we pray that the Lord heals the wounds of all who are not yet
ready to enter into the fullness of His presence. May they be healed. May any part of their lives that have been
closed to Love be completely open to the Presence of God.
So we pray today
for our deceased parents, spouses, children, relatives, and friends. We know that they were good people. But we also know that they were people. We want them to be capable of receiving the
full blast of God’s love; so we pray for them.
We celebrate funeral Masses, for that is the prayer of Jesus on the
Cross for the deceased, the greatest prayer we could offer. We have additional Masses said for our loved
ones throughout the year. We remember
them in our daily prayers. And we pray
for them particularly on today, All Souls Day, and throughout the month of
November.
We are all
united in the Community of the Church.
We are united to the saints in their triumph. We are united with the souls in purgatory in
their preparation for triumph. And the
saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory are united with us in our efforts
to make Christ a reality in our world.
I will
reject no one who comes to me, the Lord said in our gospel for today[3]. We
trust in the God who loves us to care for us and our loved ones in life and in
death. And so we pray, “May the souls of
the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.” ■
[1] All Souls (Commemoration of the
Faithful Departed), November 2, 2014. Readings: Wisdom 3:1-9; Responsorial
Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6; Romans 5:5-11; John 6:37-40.
[2] The Divine Comedy (Italian: Divina Commedia) is an epic poem written
by Dante Alighieri between c. 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely
considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the
greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical
vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had
developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the
Tuscan dialect, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language.
It is divided into three parts: Inferno,
Purgatorio, and Paradiso. On the
surface, the poem describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and
Heaven; but at a deeper level, it represents, allegorically, the soul's journey
towards God. At this deeper level, Dante draws on medieval Christian theology
and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called "the
Summa in verse".
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