Living hope for loved ones in eternity

By Jason A. Baguia
(First published November 6, 2008 on Cebu Daily News)

By all accounts as it is already sixth of November, people’s expectations now veer towards the direction of Christmas, just a little over a month from today. Less than 60 years ago and backward however, a date as this fell within what was known as the Octave of All Saints, the first eight days of November when Catholics celebrated all departed holy people, known and unknown, possibly including a number of their kith and kin.

Today, an important vestige of the octave remains. As we are already assured of the prayers of people in heaven (all of them now celebrated from the evening of October 31 up to the end of November 1), the first till eighth of November is now, wisely, dedicated to our remembering and praying for those who have gone before us into the next life but are still in transit, so to speak, to heaven.

This is part of the light of love that Christianity witnesses to, in stark contrast to the fear-driven rituals that prevailed in many pagan communities of antiquity, such as those of the Lemuralia festival of the imperial Romans, a triduum of exorcisms of dreadful, harmful, restive spirits of the dead, apparently a precursor of the themes on which modern, secular Halloween celebrations are based.

Profound remembrance of our beloved departed is encouraged by the Church in these words: “An indulgence, applicable only to the Souls in Purgatory, is granted to the faithful, who devoutly visit a cemetery and pray, even if only mentally, for the departed. The indulgence is plenary each day from the 1st to the 8th of November; on other days of the year it is partial.” (Other Grants of Indulgences, no. 13, Enchiridion of Indulgences)

The paragraph from the Enchiridion presents to us two significant things with regard to the practice of expressing our love for those who no longer live with us. First, that keeping prayerful remembrance of them by visiting the places where their remains lie is encouraged any time of the year. Second, that in the visit to a cemetery or the coemeterii visitatio we are keeping those who have passed away a part of our lives in a manner like unto gift: its spiritual benefits are directly for them.

Pope Benedict XVI, in the encyclical “Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope)” wrote words to help us understand our continuing relationship with the departed who are on their way to heaven: “The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude or even a request for pardon?”

Added the pontiff: “[N]o man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my prayer for him—can play a small part in his purification.”