Reflecting on the month of prayer for souls

The month of November – a special time given to us by the church during which we are invited to specifically remember those who have died. Sister Anna reflects on the meaning and ways of looking at this important Church tradition.

November is a happy, “lucky” month for the faithful departed, a gift from the Church and we are invited to participate in it. But how? I thought this year I might make a list of all my family members, and all those who I have known and loved, or read about, or promised to pray for. I will start with my immediate family but am already surprised at how many people are coming to mind – all those I have forgotten over the years. Incidentally, I was surprised at the name I unhesitatingly put at the head of my list (my maternal grandmother).

Everyone needs our prayers; not only our loved ones we have known but all the unknown people God may have allotted to our care. We cannot know who our prayers reach, or even have any preferences.

I sometimes wonder what God does with all the zillions of people who die – so many prematurely, unprepared, unfit to move forward to the next stage of life. There is simply so much tragic waste. Surely our prayers are needed, for all those very, very many people who have died without ever having reached their full stature as the persons they were designed to become. Is God dismayed, disappointed? Does he have to come with a “Plan B” to accommodate the journey they could have made in life and now have to carry on completing the other side of the grave? (Impossible, of course, as our God is not a God of despair but of the creative love that made the universe from nothing and raised his Son Jesus from death).

Is this post-mortem journey in some way more difficult for them, and is that why they need the assistance of the Church still on earth? Indeed, I believe that to be true, but one must not ignore the incredible signs we are given of hope.

For instance, as St John Henry Newman so poignantly points out, it may well be that those who somehow “miss out” on their vocation will in fact discover it the other side of the grave.

True, too, is the fact that we cannot know what the real person is like until God has stripped them of all the ills that life has dealt them. As St Catherine of Genoa points out in her treatise on purgatory, God only shows us the dross after he has purged it from us, so delicate is his love. And then, we have the sure promise of the coming of that Day of Days when, in a twinkling of the eye, all will be made new and all the distress of the world will be ended.

We  can see signs of this process of transformation and hope of a glorious end in our dear departed ones themselves. I remember seeing my mother laid out after her very difficult death  and being overwhelmed by the sense of peace in the room and the look of nobility on her face.  She looked different, changed, her lost dignity plainly restored. And how often is that the case, for who knows what happens, even in the process of death itself.

“And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us…”

As during this month we pray for God’s mercy on all the faithful departed, we may, by extension, pray for any forgiveness that may be needed on our part from them, trusting that they now are able to see and judge us with the vision of Christ.  During this special month we can ask for that forgiveness – for any “neglect or indifference” on our part as our intercessions put it. Even though we know that forgiveness is already granted us by those close to the heart of God, we still feel the regret and the sense that we caused something/ put something negative into the world for which we must bear the responsibility.

And then there is the issue of all the harm done to us by those who have gone before us, perhaps without a chance to apologise or put things right. Now they will surely be stricken to know of any pain they may have caused us  They will be longing for our forgiveness for them, and begging us not to think ill of them. Indeed, one of my father’s most oft quoted maxims was “Never speak ill of the dead.”  Obviously someone in his life had inculcated in him this sense of reverent awe for the faithful departed. I have wondered just what this respect owed to the dead might be, and think it has something to do with the fact that the dead are now “hidden with Christ in God”, in that mysterious, holy realm that we cannot reach or ever fully understand here on earth. We stand in awe before the God who made us, and all our loved ones God is keeping and protecting and healing for us until the final consummation.