They shall give an accounting to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead. The reason the gospel was preached even to the dead was that, although condemned in the flesh in the eyes of men, they might live in the spirit in the eyes of God. The consummation of all is close at hand. Therefore do not be perturbed; remain calm so that you will be able to pray. Above all, let your love for one another be constant, for love covers a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4: 5-9
We have this confidence in God: that he hears us whenever we ask for anything according to his will. And since we know that he hears us whenever we ask, we know that what we have asked him for is ours. 1 John 5:14-15.
Today, All Souls Day, we pray for the dead who are on a healing journey to the vision of God. This is what it means to “live in the spirit in the eyes of God” and our prayers for those on this final journey are like preaching - for whenever we preach, it is a prayer for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Yes, we pray for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit on our brothers and sisters -- and they count on our prayers for this outpouring. Notwithstanding their faith, they were blinded by sin, the eyes of their hearts wounded by the hostility to God's love that Christ came to overcome. Even so, they believed in Him whom they glimpsed in faith, if only in part, for all it takes is a partial glimpse for the power of sin to lose its hold. The Holy Spirit has the power to fully open their eyes to the goodness of the Father, the immensity of His love for them because this Gift of the Holy Spirit was won for them by the Blood of Jesus. They are on a final journey because they are claimed by this Blood and by this Blood, they have already tasted new life. But like the blind man who Jesus had to heal not just once but twice (Mark 8:22-26), they too are engaged in a special encounter with Him who is not satisfied with only a partial healing, but works until vision is made perfect.
Purgatory is a journey into the vision of the Trinity, the mutual gaze of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a gaze filled with meaning and tenderness, a vision of eternal life! The Father beholds us with such love because He contemplates us in His Son. This means, He regards us as his own children, with the same eternal love that He regards his Son. Jesus, likewise, gazes on us with tender love, patiently awaiting the Holy Spirit to bring to completion the work He has begun in us. It is with this same love that God beholds our brothers and sisters who have died. He sees them and He yearns for them to be restored and filled with His glory. He yearns for their resurrection from the dead. It is, then, this gaze of love that meets a soul at the moment of death. It is to this gaze that it must learn to open the eyes of its heart – for only when it sees how loved it is can a soul enter into the dwelling place prepared for it from before the foundation of the world.
After death, Catholics believe that souls whose eyes are not yet fully open to the love of God cross a healing threshold called Purgatory. This is where St. Peter speaks of preaching to the gospel to the dead. Dante describes it as ascending a mountain. St. John of the Cross describes contemplation as a dark night that in some way realizes the healing and transformation that we attribute to purgatory. Some saints understand it with a certain penal metaphor in which satisfaction is, in some sense, made for sins. St. John Paul II describes it in therapeutic terms in which the wounds of sin are remedied. In Tolkien’s Leaf by Niggle, it starts out as an operating room and becomes a pilgrimage in which dreams of the heart are realized and surpassed. However, one understands this place, it is not yet the glory of heaven but it is already liberation from hell. This is a place of healing satisfying love in the face of death in which, having only partially allowed ourselves to know all Christ yearns to show us in this life, we learn to fully open our eyes to the astonishing mystery of the Father’s plan.
We pray for the dead because we long to relieve the suffering they undergo as they cross the threshold of hope to the Face of God. Suffering is part of healing our spiritual sight and God has willed that His healing love be made manifest through our prayers for each other. What is being suffered is a love that bears away sin and prayer unites us to this atoning love, implicates our hearts in the plight of others and in the plight of God who yearns to bear away all sin that separates a heart from HIs love. This includes all the wounds and obstacles to love that sin leaves in its wake. The prayer of faith is a movement of the Holy Spirit in the Chruch to heal these wounds and remove these obstacles. It suffers forgiving those who died and even seeking their forgiveness. It suffers the surrender of all bitterness, shame, resentment and anxiety for those who have died until they are free. In this suffering, we believe that souls do not have the power to pray for themselves, only for others. So they rely on our prayers for them - but also realize how much we need their prayers too.
Not to be able to pray for oneself is the greatest poverty of all, and so we call them poor souls. At the same time, the dawn from on high is already breaking on them and the immensity of God’s love is already overflowing their hearts – they just do not know the joy of it yet. They cannot see it the way Jesus yearns for them to know it. So we pray for them, for the healing of their spiritual sight until they open their eyes to the glory that the Church calls beatific. No matter how wonderful a moment of contemplation might be in this life, it pales before the mystery to which their eyes are opening – and so, today, we join our hearts to theirs and ask the Lord to manifest his healing power on their behalf.
Yes, today is All Souls Day. It is a day of prayer for those who have gone before us in the faith. I have family members and friends who I am lifting up, and who I know lift me up too! For a beautiful part of the mystery of the Church is that we never stop praying for each other. We never stop loving each other. We never stop preaching the gospel to each other – for the Gospel is life and together in Christ, as members of His mystical Body, we are bound together in love, truth and life, being made holy and immaculate by His Blood.
コメント