“We will not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as others who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians iv. 12).
The Church today has the same desire as the Apostle thus expressed to the first Christians. The truth concerning the dead not only proves admirably the union between God’s justice and His goodness: it also inspires a charitable pity which the hardest heart cannot resist, and at the same time offers to the mourners the sweetest consolation. If faith teaches us the existence of a Purgatory where our loved ones may be detained by unexpiated sin, it is also of faith that we are able to assist them. And theology assures us that their more or less speedy deliverance lies in our power. Let us call to mind a few principles which throw light on this doctrine. Every sin causes a twofold injury to the sinner: it stains his soul and renders him liable to punishment. Venial sin, which displeases God, requires a temporal expiation. Mortal sin deforms the soul and makes the guilty man an abomination to God: its punishment cannot be anything less than eternal banishment, unless the sinner, in this life, prevents the final and irrevocable sentence. But even then the remission of the guilt, though it revokes the sentence of damnation, does not cancel the whole debt. Although an extraordinary overflow of grace upon the prodigal may sometimes, as is always the case with regard to baptism and martyrdom, bury every remnant and vestige of sin in the abyss of divine oblivion, yet it is the ordinary rule, that for every fault satisfaction must be made to God’s justice, either in this world or in the next.
On the other hand, every supernatural act of virtue brings a double profit to the just man: it merits for his soul a fresh degree of grace, and it makes satisfaction for past faults in exact proportion to the value, in God’s sight, of that labour, privation or trial accepted, or that voluntary suffering endured, by one of the members of His beloved Son. Now, whereas merit is a personal acquisition and cannot be transferred to others, satisfaction may be vicarious. God is willing to accept it in payment of another’s debt, whether the recipient of the boon be in this world or in the next, provided only that he be united by grace to the mystical Body of our Lord, which is one in charity. This is a consequence of the mystery of the Communion of Saints, as Suarez explains in his beautiful treatise on Suffrages. Appealing to the authority of the greatest and most ancient princes of science, and discussing the objections and restrictions since proposed by others, the illustrious theologian does not hesitate to formulate this conclusion with regard to the suffering souls in particular: “I believe that this satisfaction of the living for the dead is a matter of simple justice, and that it is infallibly accepted with its full value, and according to the intention of him who applies it. Thus, for instance, if the satisfaction I make would, if kept for myself, avail me in strict justice for the remission of four degrees of Purgatory, it will remit exactly the same amount to the soul for whom I choose to offer it” (Suarez, De Suffragiis, Sectio vi.)
We well know how the Church seconds the goodwill of her children. By the practice of Indulgences, she places at their charitable disposal the inexhaustible treasure accumulated, from age to age, by the superabundant satisfactions of the Saints, added to those of the Martyrs, and united to those of our blessed Lady and the infinite residue of our Lord’s sufferings. These remissions of punishment she grants to the living by her own direct power, but she nearly always approves of and permits their application to the dead by way of suffrage, that is to say, in the manner in which, as we have seen, each of the faithful may offer to God who accepts it, for another, the suffrage or succour of his own satisfactions. Such is the doctrine of Suarez, who adds that an Indulgence ceded to the dead loses nothing either of the security or of the value it would have had for ourselves who are still militant.
Now Indulgences under every form are continually coming in our way. Let us make use of our treasures and exercise mercy towards the poor suffering souls. Is any condition more pitiable than theirs? So great is their anguish that no distress on Earth can approach to it, and withal so nobly endured, that not a murmur breaks the silence of that “river of fire, which in its imperceptible current bears them on little by little to the ocean of Paradise.” All Heaven cannot help them, for there is no merit to be gained there. God Himself, though most merciful, owes it to His justice not to deliver them until they have paid the whole debt that they carried with them beyond the world of trial. The debt was contracted perhaps through our fault, and in our company. And it is to us they turn for help, to us who are still dreaming of nothing but pleasure, while they are burning and we could so easily shorten their torments! “Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you my friends, because the hand of the Lord has touched me” (Job xix. 21).
Whether it be that Purgatory is now more than ever overflowing with the multitudes daily sent there through the worldliness of the age, or that the last and universal judgement is approaching, the Holy Ghost is no longer satisfied with keeping up the zeal of ancient confraternities devoted to the service of the departed. He raises up new associations, and even religious families, whose one aim is to promote, by every possible means, the deliverance or the solace of the suffering souls. In this kind of redemption of captives there are likewise to be found Christians who at their own risk offer to take upon themselves the chains of their brethren by utterly foregoing, for this purpose, not only all their own satisfactions, but even the suffrages which may be offered for them after death: an heroic act of charity, which must not be lightly undertaken, but which the Church approves. For it greatly glorifies our Lord, and in return for the risk incurred of a temporary delay of beatitude, merits for its author a greater nearest to God, both by grace here below, and in glory in Heaven. If the suffrages of the simple faithful are of such value, of how much more are those of the whole Church in the solemnity of public prayer and the oblation of the awful Sacrifice in which God Himself makes satisfaction to God for every sin!
From the very beginning the Church has always prayed for the dead, as did even the Synagogue before her (2 Maccabees xii. 46). As she honoured with thanksgiving the anniversaries of her martyred sons, so she celebrated with supplications the memory of her other children who might not yet be in Heaven. In the sacred Mysteries she daily uttered the names of both for this twofold purpose of praise and prayer. As in each particular church it was impossible to name all the Blessed of the entire world, a common mention was made of them all. And in like manner, after the recommendations peculiar to each place and day, a general commemoration was made of all the dead. Thus, as Saint Augustine remarks, those who had no relatives and friends on Earth were henceforth not deprived of suffrages: for, to make up for their abandonment, they had the tender compassion of the common Mother.
The Church having always followed the same method with regard to the commemoration of the blessed and that of the departed, it might be expected that the establishment of All Saints Feast in the ninth century would soon lead to the solemn Commemoration of All Souls. In 998, according to the Chronicle of Sigebert of Gembloux, Saint Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, instituted it in all the monasteries under his crosier, to be celebrated in perpetuity on the morrow of All Saints. In certain visions recorded in his Life, Odilo and his monks had been denounced by the demons as the most indefatigable helpers of the holy souls, and most formidable to the powers of Hell. And this institution was the Saint’s retaliation. The world applauded the decree. Rome adopted it and it became the law of the whole Latin Church.
The Greeks make a general commemoration of the dead on the eve of our Sexagesima Sunday, which with them is called Apocreos or Carnival, and on which they celebrate the second coming of our Lord. They give the name of “Saturday of all souls” to this day, as well as to the eve of Pentecost when they again pray solemnly for the departed.
Today the Roman Church doubles her task of daily service to the divine Majesty. The Commemoration of the Dead does not distract her from the Saints. The Office of the second day within the Octave preceded the Dirge. Tierce of All Saints has been followed by the corresponding Mass, and it is after None of the same Office that the holy Sacrifice is offered for the faithful departed. On account of this increase, and her solicitude to maintain the harmony she has established between the two liturgical objects of this day, Rome has never countenanced the extension of a privilege existing in Spain, which allows each Priest to offer three Masses for the Dead. For a long period Rome alone, with a few churches that kept the most closely to her, recited the Office of All Saints on the second of November. Most of the Western churches said only that of the Dead. At the day Hours, as well as at Matins and Lauds, the Hymn and the Deus in adjutorium were suppressed. The ordinary Psalms were concluded with Requiem aeternam, and the Collect for the Dead was said at the close, as is still the custom among the Friars Preachers. The one Solemn Mass, that of the Dead, was celebrated after Tierce. This Commemoration of the faithful departed usually ended at None but Cluny maintained, up to [the eighteenth] century, the custom of celebrating second Vespers.
As to the obligation of resting from servile work on All Souls’ day, it was of semi-precept in England, the more necessary works being permitted. In some places the obligation lasted only till midday. In others assistance at Mass was alone enjoined. For some time, Paris kept the 2nd November as a Feast of obligation. In 1673 the command to observe it until midday was retained in the statutes by the Archbishop Francis de Harlay. The precept no longer exists, even at Rome.
The remark of Amalarius, quoted above with regard to the Office of the Dead, is no less applicable to the Mass. Not to mention the suppression of the Gloria in excelsis and of the Alleluia, the Priest omits the Psalm Judica me at the foot of the Altar, as in Passiontide. As on Good Friday, he is clothed in black vestments. Most of the blessings are omitted, as also the kiss of peace, and the various marks of honour shown to the celebrant. The altar is thurified but once, and the singing of the Gospel is done as on that great day, viz: the Deacon receives no blessing from the Celebrant, lights and incense are not used, and the Priest does not kiss the sacred text. So closely, even in death, does the Church draw her children to him whose members they are.Epistle – 1 Corinthians xv. 51‒57
Brethren, behold, I tell you a mystery: we will all indeed rise again, but we will not all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise again incorruptible, and we will be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this mortal has put on immortality, then will come to pass the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? Now the sting of death is sin: the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
While the soul is supplying in Purgatory for the insufficiency of her expiations, the body she has quitted returns to the earth in virtue of the sentence pronounced against Adam and his race from the beginning of the world. But, with regard to the body as well as the soul, justice is full of love. Its claims are a prelude to the glory which awaits the whole man. The humiliation of the tomb is the just punishment of original sin, but in this return of man to the earth from which he sprang, Saint Paul would have us recognise the sowing necessary for the transformation of the seed which is destined to live again under very different conditions. For flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians xv. 50), neither can corruptible members aspire to immortality. The body of the Christian, which Saint Ignatius of Antioch calls the wheat of Christ, is cast into the tomb, as it were into the furrow, there to leave its own corruption, the form of the first Adam with its heaviness and infirmity: but by the power of the new Adam reforming it to his own likeness, it will spring up all heavenly and spiritualised, agile, impassible and glorious. Blessed be He who willed to die for us in order to destroy death, and to make His own victory ours!Gospel – John xv. 25‒29
At that time, Jesus said to the multitude of the Jews, “Amen, amen I say to you, that the hour comes, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has given to the Son also to have life in Himself: And He has given him power to do judgement, because he is the Son of man. Wonder not at this; for the hour comes in which all that are in the graves will hear the voice of the Son of God. And they that have done good things, will come forth to the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, to the resurrection of judgement.Praise be to you, O Christ.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Purgatory is not eternal. Its duration varies according to the sentence pronounced at each particular judgement. It may be prolonged for centuries in the case of the more guilty souls, or of those who, being excluded from the Catholic communion, are deprived of the suffrages of the Church, although by the divine mercy they have escaped Hell. But the end of the world, which will be also the end of time, will close forever the place of temporary expiation. God will know how to reconcile His justice and His goodness in the purification of the last members of the human race, and to supply by the intensity of the expiatory suffering what may be wanting in duration. But, whereas a favourable sentence at the particular judgement admits of eternal beatitude being suspended, and postponed, and leaves the bodies of the elect to the same fate as those of the reprobate: at the universal judgement, every sentence, whether for Heaven or for Hell, will be absolute and will be executed immediately and completely. Let us, then, live in expectation of the solemn hour when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God (John v. 25). He that is to come, will come and will not delay, as the Doctor of the Gentiles reminds us. His arrival will be sudden, as that of a thief, we are told, not only by Saint Paul, but also by the Prince of the Apostles and the Beloved Disciple, and these in turn are but echoing the words of our Lord Himself: “As lightning comes out of the East and appears even to the West: so will also the coming of the Son of Man be.”On this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
The the birthday of St. Victorinus, bishop of Poitiers, who, after writing many works, as was attested by St. Jerome, was crowned with martyrdom in the persecution of Diocletian.
At Trieste, blessed Justus, who consummated his martyrdom in the same persecution under the governor Manatius.
At Sebaste, the Saints Carterius, Styriacus, Tobias, Eudoxius, Agapius and their companions, martyrs, under the emperor Licinius.
In Persia, the holy martyrs Acindynus, Pegasius, Aphtonius, Elpidephorus and Anempodistus, with their numerous companions.
In Africa, the birthday of the holy martyrs Publius, Victor, Hermes and Papias.
At Tarsus in Cilicia, in the reign of Julian the Apostate, St. Eustochium, virgin and martyr, who breathed her last in prayer in the midst of severe torments.
At Laodicea in Syria, St. Theodotus, a bishop, powerful in words, and adorned with good works and virtues.
At Vienne, St. George, bishop.
In the monastery of St. Maurice, in Switzerland, St. Ambrose, abbot.
At Cyrus, in Syria, St. Marcian, confessor.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
