There is a Quaker quote that goes like this: “I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any person; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again”. Have you ever missed a chance of helping another person? Public transport is a good place to start. For fear of what the other passengers might think (loser!), one shies away from offering one’s seat but sometimes when one has worked up the courage, the moment is gone.
That is how death works.
Death closes the door to any good that one can do. In other words, regret is of no use and those who find themselves in a position too late to do anything, their only recourse is to depend on others, most especially on their prayers and sacrifices which is why we have the beauty of the Communion of Saints. Our faith binds us together. Those who have died and are in glory, those who have died and are waiting, those who are still labouring on earth are united as one Body of Christ. The Saints or the Church triumphant, known or unknown, whom we commemorated yesterday, apart from enjoying the beatific vision help us with their intercession. The Souls in purgatory, the Church suffering, are those who have died in God’s grace and friendship but have not been perfectly purified. They are unable to do anything for themselves even though they can pray for us, the Church militant, who are still working out our salvation on earth.
Purgatory is therefore a needed station or an existential state for souls on their pilgrim way to God simply because “nothing unclean will enter the presence of God in heaven” (Rev 21:27). They may not have mortal sins but they may still have impurities, especially venial sins and also, they may need to undergo justified temporal punishment even though their sins have already been forgiven.
How to explain this?
You remember the two thieves on either side of Jesus. Dismas was promised eternity because he repented and yet Jesus did not commute his punishment. He was forgiven and assured of his place in heaven and yet he still hung on the cross. The simple explanation is that sins have consequences and sometimes the effects of one’s sin drag on. A good illustration is the sin of gossip. So many believe that it is an innocuous sin. When we have smeared someone’s name, even after we have stopped and repented of our sin, the damage to the reputation continues because we cannot control the mouths of others.
Temporal punishment is the price we pay for our sins even though we have repented and are forgiven. King David, who repented of his sin of adultery was forgiven by God, but still, he suffered the death of his child as a consequence of his sin. It sounds frighteningly alien as if God were calculative, vengeful and waiting to exact His pound of flesh. Our notion of a merciful God, sadly, does not admit of justice as one of His attributes. God should be merciful but He cannot be just because we cannot take it.
Perhaps it makes more sense to recognise that underneath sin and punishment is the heavy and inconvenient truth of repercussion for our actions or lack of. Sin is not merely violating a law or command but damaging a relationship with God. When there is damage, there is bound to be consequences. What we need to do is to mend the relationship through sorrow, repentance, prayers, sacrifices, penance and acts of charity. In that way, purgatory is both a merciful gesture of God and it is also just, given by God for the possibility for repairing our relationship with Him.
This means that souls do languish or linger in purgatory because they are waiting for their purification and their turn to go heaven. What helps them is our sacrifices and prayers. In short, our assistance fulfils the basic principle of the Church’s practice of indulgences—we help those who have died to commute or shorten their temporal punishment due to sins. One of the corporal acts of mercy is to assist in the burying of the dead. One of the spiritual acts of mercy is to pray for the living and the dead.
This brings me back to the insistence of a Catholic funeral for a deceased of whom the family is not practising. A funeral is not really for the dead. They do not care for the coffin or whatever elaborate eulogy that is prepare for them. They have crossed a portal from which there is no return to right whatever wrong they may have done. And from where they are, they long for the final reconciliation with God. Our duty is to pray that their reunion can happen sooner rather than later.
If you are sure that after death, you will be in heaven, good for you. I am happy for you. Me, I am conscious that I have booked a place in purgatory, if not in hell first. We have been promised too much by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men. According to “One Sweet Day”, the passage from death to eternity seems to be automatic because we have confused forgiveness with forgetfulness. Bonhoeffer defined “cheap grace” as the “preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without Church discipline. Communion without Confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ”. In other words, we want Jesus to be the Saviour. We hesitate to follow Him as the Lord.
All Souls’ Day, apart from the call to pray for the dead, functions just like all funerals. It is a memento mori. A style of iconography, that is, a kind of painting of Saints, is centred on the theme of memento mori. These paintings often depict the saints near to instruments of their death or being reminded of death. That is the meaning of memento mori—a reminder of death. I saw a picture yesterday of St Francis of Assisi, kneeling, in prayer, holding on one hand, a skull. This memento mori invite us to think of our own death. On All Souls’ Day, the epitaph on the tomb that says, “Where you are, I once was. Where I am, you will be” beckons us to do the good we need to, to repent our lives before it is too late. It is a reminder to us who are living not to waste any opportunity so that our purgatory will be shorter rather than longer.
Those who are not practising but want a Catholic funeral fail to understand the role that funeral plays. It is a reminder to us that time is short. Better prepare for a holy death than not because one day we will be in a box.
