November and the Communion of Saints

The great Cathedral in Cologne, Germany, was the center of pilgrimage for the young people of the world last August during World Youth Day. Its art, especially the stained glass windows, is a translation of Holy Scripture into color and form. Its statues and shrines bring Christ and his mother and many saints into our thoughts and prayers. Qualifying the beauty of the art and architecture is the fact that the Cathedral was built between the 12th and the 19th centuries. In Chicago, by contrast, in a city rebuilt so vigorously after the Great Fire of 1871, we have very few buildings over a hundred years old. What took them so long to build in Cologne and why did they stay at this task from generation to generation, giving themselves in each generation to a building they would not see completed? Basically, because they were people of faith, and the horizon of faith is never limited to one person’s or one generation’s experience. There is always more, in this life and in the next.

In faith, we belong to a society that is not only universal now but which extends backward and forward in time and reaches into eternity. We call it the communion of saints. It reminds us that the Church does not come to an end at the threshold of death. The Church is made up of all those who belong to Christ, in this life and the next. The beginning of November each year brings two feasts that remind us we are one with all those who have gone before us in faith

On Nov. 1, the Church celebrates the feast of All Saints. From the prophets and holy men and women of God’s covenant with the Jewish people to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the apostles and martyrs of all nations, even to the death of those who die in God’s grace today, heaven is peopled with those who love us and want to help us. Heaven is another name for a perfected relationship with God. Its attainment is, in the end, the only thing that matters, the only criterion for judging the success of one’s life.

Belief in heaven is perhaps weakened today by a virtual denial of hell. Hell is the communion of all those separated eternally from God’s love. It is caricatured, and therefore more easily dismissed, in the fearful tales and spooky games of Halloween. The devil and his legions are condemned to hell. Whether there are spirits of human beings among them is an open question, but not even God’s infinite love removes our freedom to separate ourselves from him, now and for eternity. If both heaven and hell disappear from the horizon of this life, we become short-sighted. A life that is truly free and adequate to the best of human aspirations is a life in which heaven is longed for and hell is abhorred through all one’s days.

On Nov. 2, the Church celebrates the feast of All Souls. Death comes to everyone of us and cuts our lives short, so often when we are still learning to love honestly and intimately, while we are underdeveloped morally and still learning to appreciate the beauty of holiness in all its dimensions. Yet our lives are not destined to end with a sense of incompleteness or frustration or resigned stoicism. There is an eternal source behind all things that gives our life its ultimate meaning, an almighty and infinitely loving God who wants us to be united to Him forever, living always in the love He showers upon us.

To come into the presence of the living God is an event beyond our imagining. Jesus speaks about life with God in the parables of the Kingdom, where he often compares it to a great banquet set by a King. To sit at the table demands a wedding garment (see Mt 22:11-14), which is one way to imagine the transformation that comes to us when we are clothed with God’s grace. The life of grace begins in this life, radically so when we are washed clean and made holy in the waters of baptism. But the union with God given us by his grace is often tenuous because of our sinning. Not yet thoroughly transformed into the likeness of God, with a wedding garment only partially stitched, many can die, having accepted the truth about God and our destiny without this truth having been fully worked into their character. While living here in the communion of saints, spiritual transformation takes time, given the kind of half-hearted creatures we are. Those who have died in God’s grace but not fully prepared for heaven are the souls in purgatory, whom the Church prays for on Nov. 2.

“All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation, but after death they undergo purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter heaven.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030). This is the consoling doctrine of the Church: for all who need it, purgatory is the final step on the way to heaven. In purgatory, all attachment to sin is overcome, reparation is made for faults and the soul is perfected in the love of God. The Church teaches the existence of purgatory, along with that of heaven and hell, but she stops short of speaking about the process of transformation after death. The important point is that those in purgatory are fully part of the Church, members of the communion of saints. We can help them and they can help us. We help each other by our prayers for one another.

From the beginning of the Church, the Eucharist has been offered as a sacrifice for the living and the dead. The Church prays daily for her deceased members, that they may soon find in God’s presence “light, happiness and peace.” (Roman Canon of the Mass) The fruits of the Eucharistic sacrifice, the most powerful of all prayers, can be directed to specific purposes by the priest who celebrates the Mass and by those who specify the intention of the Mass through the offering of a stipend (see the Code of Canon Law, 945 and 946). The greatest kindness Catholics can express to someone who has died and to their family is to offer stipends for Masses to be celebrated for the one who has died.

“Funerals are for the living” is a half-truth that is destructive of the faith if it implies that a funeral Mass is just a commemoration of the dead for the sake of the living and not a means of inserting a dead person into the sacrifice that brings salvation. The entire month of November is a time set aside for prayers for the faithful departed. Just as we are quick to ask for prayers for the sick, we should also pray regularly for those who have died and have Mass offered for them. This is a duty of charity and an expression of the beautiful unity of all who belong to Christ in the communion of saints. God bless you.

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