Outside the Box
- Catholics On Call Participant Profile—Megan Mio
- Catholics On Call Participant Profile—Megan Sherrier
- Catholics On Call Participant Profile-Josh Stagni
- The Pope’s Visit to the United States
- A Reflection on the Shootings at Northern Illinois University
- “Climbing the Stairway to Heaven”
- Living in Hope: What Catholics Believe About Death and Eternal Life (I)
- The Beauty of the Catholic Faith, Part VI
- The Beauty of the Catholic Faith, Part V
- The Beauty of the Catholic Faith, Part IV
- The Beauty of the Catholic Faith, Part III
- The Beauty of the Catholic Faith, Part II
- The Beauty of the Catholic Faith, Part I
- Ekklesia, Part VIII: Communion Amidst the Threat of Polarization
- Ekklesia, Part VII: The Church and Young Adults
- Ekklesia Part VI: Karl Rahner's View of the Church
- Ekklesia, Part V
- Ekklesia, Part IV
- Ekklesia, Part III
- Ekklesia, Part II
- Ekklesia, Part I
- Challenge Series: I Don’t Like the Way Women Are Treated in the Church
- Challenge Series: Why is the Church So Hung Up About Sex?
- Challenge Series: Why do Catholics Argue So Much About Their Faith?
- Challenge Series: Do I Really Need God, Anyway?
- Honoring the Sacred: A Reflection on "The Da Vinci Code"
- A Public Faith
- Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat: Woman of Courage and Confidence
- Fr. Louis Querbes: Making a Difference
- Deus Caritas Est: Dispelling Hollywood's Caricature of Catholic Love
- St. Paul of the Cross: A Young Adult's Role Model for Discernment
- Howard Stern and Us
- Making My Own Decisions
- Eight Myths About Religious Life
- True Confessions: One Man's Search for Meaning
- Outside the Box
“Climbing the Stairway to Heaven”
One of the beliefs expressed in the Creed which can bring the most comfort to grieving people is the communion of saints. In the past few years, my mother and two of my older brothers have died. I found the loss of these family members to be quite difficult. Since their deaths, the idea of the communion of saints has become much more real for me. I have come to a deeper realization that I am still connected with these loved ones. Death is not powerful enough to sever the bonds of faith and charity that we have established with our loved ones.
In its Constitution on the Church, the Second Vatican Council spoke about our enduring bonds with the deceased: “When the Lord will come in glory, and all his angels with him, death will be no more and all things will be subject to him. But 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 … All of us, however, in varying degrees and in different ways share in the same charity towards God and our neighbors and we all sing the one hymn of glory to our God. … So that the union of the wayfarers with the brothers [and sisters] who sleep in the peace of Christ is in no way interrupted, but on the contrary, according to the constant faith of the Church, this union is reinforced by an exchange of spiritual goods” (Lumen Gentium, 49).
We are the “wayfarers” of whom the Council speaks – those who are making our way on our pilgrimage through life. Our belief in the communion of saints means that our “union” with those who have gone before us in death is “in no way interrupted.” There is an exchange of “spiritual goods” between us. For example, we pray for our departed loved ones and we trust that they are praying for us. In his recent encyclical, Spe Salvi, Benedict XVI speaks of this union with others that extends to the departed. The pope says, “Our lives are involved with one another. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve” (n. 48). Mysteriously, we continue to play a part in the personal reality of the deceased, and they continue to play a part in our lives.
Nowhere is this communion of saints more real than at the celebration of the Eucharist. It is no accident that we always remember the dead in the Eucharistic Prayer. We also invoke the intercession of the saints. We believe that at the Eucharist there are more people gathered around the table of the Lord than just those we can see with our physical eyes. The saints are there with us – the officially canonized saints as well as other holy men and women we have known. I experience the presence and support of my own deceased family members most powerfully in the celebration of the Eucharist. That is an enduring source of comfort and of strength for me.
Purification
In Spe Salvi, the pope offers a reflection on purification that is quite cogent and compelling. We make many choices in life, and through those individual choices we formulate a basic choice, what Benedict calls a “life-choice.” This life-choice can be a choice for God and God’s will or a decision against God. We believe that with death this life-choice becomes definitive. For many of us, even when this basic decision is for God there are dimensions of our lives that are not consistent with this choice. I certainly want to orient my entire life toward God, but so often I recognize that what I have said or done contradicts such an orientation. As the pope says, often my basic decision for God “is covered over by ever new compromises with evil” (n. 46). There is some “stuff” in my life that covers over, and sometimes obscures, my deepest desire to love God and to love others. Catholic belief in purification means that through death we may need to be purified so that this other “stuff” is stripped away and our basic choice for God is illumined.
In writings on the topic that he authored as a theologian and in his recent encyclical, Benedict speaks of this purification in the language of encounter. Purgatory is not so much a place as it is an encounter with the Risen Christ. In death we encounter the Risen Lord who is pure love, pure grace. As the pope puts it, our encounter with Christ “transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves” (n. 47). Ultimately it is the pure, indomitable love of Christ that purifies us. This process may be “painful” but it is the work of divine love. In Benedict’s words, “At the moment of judgment we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves” (n. 47).
The tradition of prayer for the deceased reflects the belief that we can help one another in this process of purification. Just as we believe that our prayers for the living are efficacious, so lifting up the departed in prayer somehow assists them in their encounter with the Risen Lord. “The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death – this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and remains a source of comfort today” (n. 48). We do not have a mathematical formula by which to calculate exactly how this prayer for the dead “works.” But just as we would pray for a living person who is in the hospital, so we are called to remember in prayer those who have gone before us in death.
