+ J. M. J. +
(I've been wanting to write this up for a while, and this isn't perfect, but perhaps it's helpful!)
We’ve really had a lot of stuff falling on Sundays this year, and here we go again! This Sunday the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, commonly called “All Souls’ Day,” takes the place of the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time, while next Sunday the beautiful Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica takes the place of the 32nd Sunday. This is a rich gift, because it gives us a chance to celebrate these liturgies with our larger weekend congregations!
November begins with All Saints’ Day, a joyful pouring out of praise to God for all those who have served Him with heroic charity, modeling and living holiness in their concrete circumstances (including formally canonized saints, and all the saints known to God). All Souls’ Day, in contrast, is the moment par excellence dedicated to the beautiful dogma of purgatory. What’s that you say, we still believe in Purgatory?!?!? Well… for a while it was “out of fashion,” but of course what’s true doesn’t fluctuate according to people’s tastes! It seems that some people thought purgatory was kind of dark and heavy, and perhaps they encountered some vividly detailed descriptions of the pains of purgatory, and it all seemed a little over the top. Let’s try to set the context, using as I mentioned last week, the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. We’re all going to die… not the words of a pessimist, just the truth. Our mortal lives will come to an end. We can admit what is true and deal with it or pretend! Upon death we come before the Judgment Seat… and after that moment of death, there’s a lot that is mysterious. We use physical images to speak of spiritual realities that God in His wisdom has not spelled out in detail. The outline is firm and clear, the details mysterious. So, the “Judgment Seat” of Christ uses what we know about judges and courts, but if we try to pin down how that seat’s upholstered (or forget that while judgment is certain, whether or not Jesus will be sitting in a chair is not), then we go beyond God’s Revelation, and the Church’s teaching.
As C.S. Lewis so eloquently says, at the moment of our death either we will say to God, “Thy will be done,” or God will say to us, “Thy will be done.” A person is only sent to Hell by his or her own obstinate choice to refuse God’s mercy. In love, God doesn’t force Himself, His Grace, His Mercy upon us, and if we refuse it definitively, then He allows us to spend eternity away from Him. It should be a terrifying prospect… and so we should turn away from sin, and towards God. Who’s in Hell? We don’t know… the Church makes no positive declaration that any particular person is damned, but we do know Hell exists, and we know our loving Savior talked about it with some frequency… we’ve been warned!
If by His grace we say “Yes” to the Lord, that yes, however incomplete, opens the door to His mercy, and He brings us into His presence. However, God loves us too much to leave us half full of lies and sin… precisely because He is perfect mercy, He lovingly purifies us of all attachment to sin, all the temporal effects of sin. Think of a mother wiping the dirt off her son’s face as he comes in from playing, so that he can be presented to guests. Think of a physical therapist leading a patient through the painful repetitions that lead back towards walking… think of Jesus asking Peter three times, “Do you love me?” As we try to imagine what that purification or purgatory is like, we enter into imagery that is not literal, and here we might well admit that some of the lurid imagery of the past may not be particularly helpful!
Everyone in Purgatory, each soul being purified, knows that he or she is going to spend eternity with God, perfectly united with Him in joy and peace, and this is why we speak of the “Holy Souls in Purgatory.” Nonetheless, that purification is probably not pleasant, anymore than having your face wiped or your newly replaced knee bent is… anymore than Peter “enjoyed” affirming his love three times to heal his three denials. And how does time or duration play a role? Well, having died, the soul is separated from the body and outside of time, so “spending a long time” in purgatory is a metaphor that’s hard to make precise. It is obvious that someone whose life has been dedicated to sin and selfishness may need “more” purification than someone who had one small bad habit they never overcame, but God hasn’t chosen to spell that all out. The images from the saints and theologians try to express these mysteries, and we may find them more or less helpful.
Thus we remember the Living Body of Christ in all its fullness: we the Church Militant, engaged in the battle of earthly life; the Church Suffering, being purified by God’s love; and the Church Triumphant, joyfully singing God’s praises before His Throne! On this All Souls’ Day we remember our solidarity with the whole Church as we offer our prayers for all the Faithful Departed, asking God to receive them into His Kingdom, where they will in turn pray for us!
+ A. M. D. G. +
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