The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1912-12-07
PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD.


The beautiful two-fold doctrine of
the resurrection of the dead and the
communion of saints gives rise to our
Catholic custom of praying for the
dead. That custom comes down to us
confirmed by the usage of Gods chos-
en- race, says writer in the New
Zealand Tablet, and authorized by the
practice of the early Church. Hence
we revere the observance as an apos-
tolic tradition, and believe that the
dogma underlying it has it's founda-
ton in Divine revelation. The
Church's doctrine meets the mute
questionings of the human mind, and
we send up our petitions to God on
behalf of the faithful departed in be-
dience to the strong impulses and
the warm promptings of the human
heart.
When those we have loved leave us
and their ship disappears in the west,
1t we're surely an immense consola-
ton to know that between them and
us there is no dark gulf of separation,
but only the golden bridge across
which love flies with surest foot 1t
were surely almost divine happiness
to know that they and we are both
living in the porch of Gods great
house, where there is no distance;'
that they have us in their hearts, as
we run our ordered course; that it is
our blessed privilege to follow them
with the power of faith and love and
prayer beyond the grave into the
shadow of the valley, to come to their
assistance, while they are passing
through the cleansing fires of purga-
tory, by presenting to God the sacifice
of Christ, and asking Him for that
Sons sake, graciously to look down
upon our brothers in their sufferings
and deign to hasten their passage into
eternal rest. The Church comes to us
with the gladdening assurance that
these instincts of ours may be fully
satisfied.
The Catholic practice of praying for
the dead rests upon the doctrine of
the Communion of Saints. This truth
is the counterpart in the supernatural
order of the natural law of human
solidarity Men are not isolated units
in the life of grace, any more than in
domestic and civil life. AS children
in Christ's Kingdom they are as one
family under the loving Fatherhood of
God; as members of Christ's mystical
body they are incorporated not only
with Him, their common Head but
with one another and this not merely
by visible social bonds and external
cooperation but by the invisible bonds
of mutual love and sympathy and by
effective cooperation in the inner life
of grace Each is in some degree the
beneficiary of the spiritual activities
of the others, of their prayers and
good works, and their merits and sat
isfactions; nor is this degree to be
measured by those indirect ways in
which the law of solidarity works out
in other cases, nor by the conscious
and explicit altruistic intentions of
individual agents. 1t is wider than
this and extends to the bounds of the
mysterious. Now, as between the liv-
ing, no Christian can deny the reality
of this far-reaching spiritual commun-
ion; and since death, for those who
die in faith and grace, does not sever
the bonds of this communion, why
should it interrupt it's efficacy in the
case of the dead, and shut them out
from benefits of which they are capa-
BILE and may be in need? Of very few
can it be hoped that they have at
tanned perfect holiness at death; and
none but the perfectly holy are ad-
mitted to the vision of God. OF few,
on the other hand, will the despairing
thought be admitted at least by those
who love them, that they are beyond
the pale of grace and mercy, and con-
demned to eternal separation from Cod
and from all who hope to be with God.
On this ground alone it has been truly
said that purgatory is a postulate OF
I~,.S1 md
existence of the purgatorial state, it
is equally a postulate of the Christian
reason that the souls in purgatory
should continue to share in the Com
munion of Saints, or, in other words,
be helped by the prayers of their
brethren on earth and in heaven.
Christ is King in purgatory as we'll as
in heaven and on earth, and He can
not be deaf to our prayers for our
loved ones in that part of His King
dom, whom He also loves while He
chastises them For our own consola'
ton as we'll as for others we want to
believe in this living intercourse OF
charity with our dead. We would be
lieve it without explicit warrant OF
Revelation, on the strength of what is
otherwise revealed and in obedience
to the promptings of reason and nat
ural affection (Cath. Encyl. w., 653)
These offices of charity and piety in
turn bring many benefits to those who
perform them: The quality of mercy
is not strained it is twice
blessed; it blesseth him that gives
and him that takes In the Catholic
life there is no sorrow of despair-we
are not as those without hope-ant
while nature will have it's way, the
golden sun of hope never goes dowI
upon that holy grief Half the sorrow
is forgotten in the task of ministerins
to those who have gone, and to be
glad does not strike us as treason tt
the dead. Further, we find that de