All Souls
(Commemoration of the Faithful Departed)
November 2, 2014
Reading I: Wisdom 3:1-9
Responsorial Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6
Reading II: Romans 5:5-11
Gospel: John 6:37-40
Reading 1WIS 3:1-9
The souls of the just are in the hand of God,
and no torment shall touch them.
They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead;
and their passing away was thought an affliction
and their going forth from us, utter destruction.
But they are in peace.
For if before men, indeed, they be punished,
yet is their hope full of immortality;
chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed,
because God tried them
and found them worthy of himself.
As gold in the furnace, he proved them,
and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself.
In the time of their visitation they shall shine,
and shall dart about as sparks through stubble;
they shall judge nations and rule over peoples,
and the LORD shall be their King forever.
Those who trust in him shall understand truth,
and the faithful shall abide with him in love:
because grace and mercy are with his holy ones,
and his care is with his elect.
Reading 2ROM 5:5-11
Brothers and sisters:
Hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
For Christ, while we were still helpless,
died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person
one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
How much more then, since we are now justified by his Blood,
will we be saved through him from the wrath.
Indeed, if, while we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son,
how much more, once reconciled,
will we be saved by his life.
Not only that,
but we also boast of God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Or ROM 6:3-9
Brothers and sisters:
Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death?
We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death,
so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father,
we too might live in newness of life.
For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his,
we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.
We know that our old self was crucified with him,
so that our sinful body might be done away with,
that we might no longer be in slavery to sin.
For a dead person has been absolved from sin.
If, then, we have died with Christ,
we believe that we shall also live with him.
We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more;
death no longer has power over him.
Gospel JN 6:37-40
Jesus said to the crowds:
“Everything that the Father gives me will come to me,
and I will not reject anyone who comes to me,
because I came down from heaven not to do my own will
but the will of the one who sent me.
And this is the will of the one who sent me,
that I should not lose anything of what he gave me,
but that I should raise it on the last day.
For this is the will of my Father,
that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him
may have eternal life,
and I shall raise him on the last day.”
I hardly think I'd be the only one to find it hard to know where to begin in thinking about dying and death and whatever follows that definitive event. This is going to be a long day at the keyboard!
A few weeks ago we had an exchange on Catholica about how some of us have planned our funerals. Every contributor rejected the elaborate rituals, the eulogies and the expensive funeral services. Some even declared they were leaving the matter of disposal to the professionals while the family gather at home where the mood is to be joy and support - and nothing else.
This is reaction not only against the church practice of woe-full services with dread-full pleadings for the soul's salvation after all is done, but also against a funeral industry which endeavours by pomp and circumstance to cover up the reality of death itself.
Desperately wondering whether I had any insight or comment to offer, I picked up a small book at a local op shop with the title DEATH: Meaning and Mortality in Christian Thought and Contemporary Culture, Milton McC.Gatch (Seabury Press 1969). It is a scholarly survey from Hebrew and Greek expectations, through the Fathers of the Church, theology of the Middle Ages, the Reformation, and ending with three modern novels. Already it is out of date because it has nothing of the ideas of an evolving god as discussed by Peter Todd in an interview posted this week. [http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=163772] [http://brucesanguin.com/interview-with-peter-todd/]
If “consciousness has become the mirror which the universe has evolved to reflect upon itself and in which its very existence is revealed” (Todd, 2013: 13), any consideration of life beyond the death of the body would needs be based on the relationship of the individual consciousness and the universal consciousness, the "noosphere" . I wonder would it be correct to suggest that the observed becomes the observer, the known becomes the knower, based on the premise that the universe observing itself is still a creation of the unknown Knower, the Origin, Being itself.
And this morning we open to the news of P. Francis declaring that evolution is real. At last.
So if we, intelligent mites, crawling for a short space along the path of evolving reality, feel that instilled ideas of death and judgement and life eternal in joyful vision of our god or in the fires of hell no longer have traction, what do we think?
My preference would be to stay within the Hebrew context because in that context we might read the gospel words of Jeshua most authentically. But in standing back there, I need to look out into this mind-opening scenario of a cosmos evolving in awareness, and we all in necessary leadership role of intelligent living.
The Hebrews had no thought of an afterlife other than the sleep of death, waiting for awakening in future time when god would make all things new and bring his people to their final victory 'which it has not entered into the heart of man to conceive of'.'
It was the Greeks who conceived of the soul as spirit trapped in body, struggling to get out of prison by remembering the ideals of its original state. This work was the process back to fullness of life. Early Christian thinkers (the Greek Fathers), adopting this immortality of the soul, began to speculate on how the soul might be occupied after death while it waited for the final resurrection of all things being brought together in Christ.
The legal-minded Latin Fathers thought that justice demanded an immediate judgement for each one, and with time the idea of setting at rights the smaller wrongs developed into a necessary period of purgation, and even a 'place' for it, called Purgatory. That we should not only grieve the parting of our loved ones but support them with our prayer led in time to the offer of indulgence from the common treasury of goodness, which idea unfortunately could imply that salvation could be won by human trading, while everyone knew it is a totally free gift of grace from the saving act of Jesus Christ.
Demands to reform this thinking, triggered by the scandalous selling of indulgences to raise funds for the establishment church, brought on years of agony in Europe and gave birth to reformed churches in a variety of shapes and colours. Along with Rome's defensive stance it's history now, for the protagonists have at last lost the taste for fighting.
New paradigms were born with the age of science, the art of testing everything to see its truth, and doubting what could not be proven experientially. So, nobody has come back to report evidence of after-life: therefore we have no reason to believe in it, no cause to consider it at all. There is no life after death! And that's that!
But this deep stirring is not so easily dismissed. The logic of the scientific skeptic does not fully quiet the heart. We are anxious as we drift aimlessly, filling the unforgiving minute with involvement, engagement, being 'with it', so it seems. Our age has been accused of denying death for having nothing to say about it, having no language in which to investigate its significance: try talking about death at the next funeral you attend! We focus instead on memories of that good person's life and assure each other they will live forever in our hearts. We have learnt to ignore the old idea that judgement must await us all, and to scoff at the notion of praying our dear departed to a safe journey across the river Styx. We think we are rejecting emotional binds that make us vulnerable to clergy's unsettling words, while in fact we are rejecting Plato's notion of the spiritual soul's undyingness. We have bettered the Greeks at last. And the funeral directors provide the ceremonial setting in which we celebrate the emptiness of life.
*****
There's the key, I think. If death is just the ending for this crawling ant, then life itself means no more than an ant's crawling: a frantic dashing this way and that to get what we need to survive. Being more intelligent than ants, we smart ones are not going to be marshalled into productive work for the colony. We're above that. We'll carve out a niche to be secure in, and comfortable, and bugger all the rest. So now we have bettered the Romans too, with their Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori [Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland]. Do we hear a call to live for the fatherland, for the civic community, even for the family? There are signs that some live only for the self; some - too many for an educated populace; so many that we hear of them daily; it is fashionable.
*****
So where would the notion of an evolving God lead us? It seems that one characteristic of Jewish and Christian thought is that the unavoidable fact of death gives an urgency to life. Our journey-time is very short when you think of all we need to learn, of the credits we need to accumulate in the spiritual bank, the distance we need to travel in ourselves from primitive to enlightened one worthy of being remembered, worthy of unending life. The gift of salvation is not grasped at once but needs to be absorbed and blended into the experience of the years. The more the years stretch out the more we realise how little we have absorbed of that gift, how poor we are.
Paul's words echo always: Now is the time for us to wake from sleep...
There is another dimension: this urgency leads to a seductive thought of doing something of heroic grandeur. One way we would remember the dead is as heroes, and their counterparts - base villains. The great leveller here is that fascinating custom of tossing a handful of dirt into the grave: Dust to dust. Remember, man, that thou are dust... There is nothing so democratic as the grave, in spite of what splendid monuments might be built above it. So is there now any place in our post-modern world for heroes? Or is truth and dignity essentially found in the ordinary of living.
The plumber who responds promptly to our desperate call and works urgently to clear our sewer lines is today's hero in this household. It was a simple job, but dirty - ordinary, as they say. But the ordinary is sacred. Is this not democracy's gift, that the ordinary person doing the ordinary job is as good as any? So the ordinariness of death is the fitting conclusion to be welcomed with healthy realism. For thus we crawl together along evolution's path towards divinity.
As week by week the new plague, Ebola, rages many will turn to Camus' The Plague for some way to understand the impact of such a wave of dying. We should remember that Camus was writing an allegory of the dying witnessed by the Resistance in France during WWII. Death was so ordinary then. In Oran life goes on as the plague takes hold. People do not change: they view this new phenomenon with their customary detachment, for death is ordinary.
Recognition of bottomless death makes a habit-bound life even more absurd. Camus seems, then, to be creating a society of habit-oriented people in order to confront them with death in its most horrible form — the plague. Then, from this confrontation, new values regarding living will emerge. http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/the-plague/summary-and-analysis/part-1
Will new values for living arise as Ebola spreads across the world? They did in 1947, taking many forms that breathed new life into old nations and spawned new expressions of selfless giving. Many of us may not have opportunity to do anything much to stop its spread but we can all try to think about the people dying and what it means for each, and for all of us. Seeing the children we spontaneously think: They haven't even had a chance of living and they're already done.
Living is such a precious thing, and whether it is absorbed into "Being" or expanded like light bursting in coloured rays from a prism as we pass through the extraordinary doorway of death, either way it will be joyful fulfilment for everyone, for every victim of life's latest scourge. But to do it justice we need to live this day well and joyfully as best we can.
ANOTHER APPROACH
The thing that stands out, when we think about death, is comfort. We who are left feel a desperate need for comfort because all of a sudden we know it's over and we'll never see that one again, never speak to them, never hear their words or laughter, never touch their hand or heart.
Comfort is a strengthening, not just a smoothing out. We comfort one another just by being there, which is why we go so readily to the gathering of a funeral. In distress the first comfort is in being together, holding on to one another on the occasion of this one's letting go. Fingers lost their grip, eyes clouded over, expression drained from the face, and a stillness took over as that energetic presence faded and was gone. Even as we watch we realise we are bereft of this one's company. For that there is no comfort, no appeasement, no gentle tendering, no restoration. It is the end.
Yet there is comfort in our faith if we believe what we read in the book of Wisdom reflecting the thinking of the Hebrews close to the time of Jeshua:
The souls of the just are in the hand of God,
and no torment shall touch them.
They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead;
and their passing away was thought an affliction
and their going forth from us, utter destruction.
But they are in peace.
At this solemn moment there is no place for speculation about what our loved one is doing, about what they know, whether they experience ethereal light or suffer particular torture for their unforgiven sins. It is enough to find our comfort in these words of hope: "They are in the hand of God...; they are in peace."
We have been poorly served over the centuries by zealous preachers pressing reform into us with fear. There is a terror imprinted in my mind since age 11, when in the stark and lonely atmosphere of boarding school we were drilled in our annual three-day retreat with fierce images of God's wrath. The thunderous warning still booms in my brain: What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his eternal soul? I suppose it was presented as the gospel teaching, though I never could imagine Jeshua the carpenter preaching like that.
Paul too is all intent on comfort.
Brothers and sisters:
Hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
It is the gift that even as it takes your breath away is rich in promise of new life. As he "breathed out his soul" Jeshua breathed life into everyone regardless of they're being godly or ungodly.
For Christ, while we were still helpless,
died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
...
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
How much more then, since we are now justified by his Blood,
will we be saved through him from the wrath.
Indeed, if, while we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son,
how much more, once reconciled,
will we be saved by his life...
It must be harder to accept a loving god than to fear an angry one. Otherwise I cannot see any reason why so many cling to the vengeful image or, because of it, reject out of hand the notion of life beyond this one, "with God ".
Jesus said to the crowds:
“Everything that the Father gives me will come to me,
and I will not reject anyone who comes to me,
because I came down from heaven not to do my own will
but the will of the one who sent me."
'Look,' he says, 'I am a messenger from god. The "Father" has given me full authority to invite you and you and you... Come to me. I will not reject anyone because I am to do the "Father's" will. Even if you might feel I must reject you because of what you are, that is not the "Father's" will!
"And this is the will of the one who sent me,
that I should not lose anything of what he gave me,
but that I should raise it on the last day.
I wonder did Jeshua have any idea of what it meant, this 'raise it up on the last day'? Did the gospel writer, any more than we do? Probably not, I think, because he went on to repeat the promise in exactly the same words:
For this is the will of my Father,
that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him
may have eternal life,
and I shall raise him on the last day.”
*****
There is another question: should we try to bring comfort to the souls of the faithful departed (as the phrase goes)? Can we pray for the dead in the liturgy of All Souls Day, or in our visits to their tombs, or in our nightly remembering? You know I think we can, but it is not bargaining with our prayers against God's just demands, or using leverage in negotiations through the Virgin Mother. For me it is just in remembering with honour, in honouring them with my own memories. I hope in some small way I am a worthy memorial for some.
This is why the Mass in its earlier form of silent ritual remembrance was so appropriate. "Unde et memores..." we said in the words of the Eucharistic Prayer: "Whence also we recall, Lord, we your servants and your holy people...", and it was easy in that silence to feel the presence gathered around as we remembered the passing over through death of the One who came from the Father and returned to the Father, taking with him the whole host of humankind brought to fullness in life. I want all those I can remember with me, and me to be with them: that is my prayer, and I've no sense that it is vain or meaningless.
*****
I looked up Life Stats on Google and found that on average 105 people die every minute. That's nearly two every second. But when a catastrophe happens, or serious bombing in war, or a plague, it must be many more in some seconds. Even thousands. Death is very very common.
Can we offer comfort in our thoughts to thousands dying? Or can we only harden our thoughts and divorce them from our feelings in a matter of fact indifference? What if Ebola is not confined, but spreads across the globe? What if thousands are dying every hour? Will we still find hope in words of comfort softly spoken? Or will we panic? Or despair?
Will we have hope strong enough to comfort the dying and spend ourselves in fighting this plague in the hope of saving most, or many, or just a few at least? Where will that strength come from? Will we still believe that god has some purpose in mind for this cosmic experiment?