“Like other families,
our list gets longer,” noted the wife. We were jotting names for “All
Souls Day” requiem masses. She adds—wistfully: “Sooner rather than later,
somebody will have to write our names in too.”
“Death is only a
horizon,” the old prayer says. “And a horizon is the limit of our sight....We
give back to You Lord who first gave them to us: our faithful dead, whose
beauty and truth are even now in our hearts.”
Anglo-Catholic and
Roman Catholic churches commemorate the faithful departed on November 2, BBC
writes. They pray for those still atoning for misdeeds.
“All Hallows
Eve” or Halloween marked the Celtic new year. In 1848, Irish
immigrants brought the feast to the US. When younger, the wife and
I trailed two grand-daughters, in spooky dresses, knocking for “trick or
treat” goodies in a San Francisco suburb.
Here, we’d light
with our grandchildren candles before graves of family members. The customs
resemble Mexico’s “Dia de los Muertos,” Now, grandkids have disappeared
into US and Swedish schools we place flowers on graves of relatives whose
families vanished in the immigration diaspora.
There is an overload
of spot broadcasts or reports: traffic jams, squatters living in cemeteries
turned into two-day “cities”, zapped by karaoke. Yet, some 2,500
years before Easter’s empty tomb, an ailing Job cried: “Oh, that my words
were engraved in rock forever. I know my Redeemer lives. And in the end,
He will stand forth upon the earth. And after my skin shall have been
destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.”
Or try 175 BC-134
BC. A Jewish rebellion broke out against the ruling dynasty. And Judas
Maccabeus wrote”: It is a good and wholesome thought to pray for the
dead.”
From its start,
the Church prayed for the dead. By year 998, Abbot Oddilo of Cluny picked November
2 for this remembrance. The practice spread to other countries by 10th
century’s end. The living can help the departed, the doctrine went, by
asceticism’s trio of prayer, sacrifice and alms.
“Who doesn't have
unfinished business with someone whom death has taken?” asks Fr. Ron Rolheiser. But it's
never too late if we take seriously the communion of saints’ tenet. Enshrined
in our creed, it says we’re in real community with those who have
died.
“Death washes some
things clean” where hurts prevailed, it can bring a peace, a clarity, and
a charity, that were not possible before. Why?
It's not simply
because the death changed the chemistry and took someone out of the family, the
office, or friends. Or as or sometimes may seem the case, the source of the
tension. It happens because, as Luke's account of Jesus on the cross teaches. "Today
you will be with me in paradise!"
“Jesus speaks
those words to the good thief on the cross. And they're meant for every one of
us who dies without yet fully being a saint and without having had the time and
opportunity to make all the amends and speak all the apologies that we owe to
others.
“There is still
time after death, on both sides, for reconciliation and healing to
happen. Inside the communion of saints we have access to each other. “And
there we can finally speak 0f those words that we couldn't speak before. We
reach across death's divide.”
"Why do you
seek the living among the dead?” Those words were spoken by an angel to Mary
Magdalene when she came to anoint Jesus’ body in the garden tomb. Curious
words? Perhaps. They contain, though, a secret. Seek for them among the
living, not among the dead. “We will meet the ones we can no longer touch by
placing ourselves in situations where their spirits can flourish,” John
Shea writes.
Every good person
shapes the infinite life and compassion of God in his or her unique way. When
that person dies, we must seek him or her among the living.
Whether in the dim
catacombs off Rome’s Appian Way, or in our garishly lighted cemeteries, “All
Souls’ Day 2013 speaks to us again in Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s
poignant verse: “Death is not the extinguishing of life. It is putting out the
lamp, because dawn has come.
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