Let’s talk about death, bay-bee! Let’s talk about you and me!
Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be! Let’s talk about DEATH!
In my experience, most Australians live in a fog of utter denial about death.
Only 15 per cent of us still die at home. Our funeral advertising is a master class in avoidance.
So thank goodness we as Catholics have the whole month of November to think about it. Or at the very least, the first two days.
You’re going to die one day. I guarantee it.
No matter how you try to avoid it, it is coming for you at the steady rate of 24 hours a day.
So what then? What then, indeed.
How did you live your life? What legacy did you leave?
Will anyone miss you? Will they heave a sigh of relief that it’s all over?
Will they fight over your property? Will they visit your grave?
And above all – will they pray for you?
I wish more Australian Catholics believed in the power of prayer for the dead. I wish more of them practised it more often.
Let’s be 100 per cent selfish for a moment. Imagine you are facing bankruptcy because you are in so much debt that you can barely move.
You have no job and no means of paying that debt because all your property has already been seized by your other creditors.
Now imagine someone decides to give you regular large sums of money to help you pay off that debt, with no strings attached – a gift, not a loan.
You can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Finally, you are debt-free.
And when your benefactor needs help in turn, you would absolutely help them out.
That’s how it works with prayer for the dead. It’s the greatest act of charity you can do for them.
It’s remarkable that our souls can survive apart from our bodies. It takes a special miracle to sustain them, because that’s not what God intended.
But we all know what went wrong (Gen 3), and continues to go wrong, which means we have a dual process of purification to go through.
Our bodies will die, before being resurrected as You 2.0, never to die again.
Our soul comes to God for judgement and is entirely in his hands until we get our resurrected bodies back.
Some of us may be in a fit state to go straight to his home and start the party.
That would be all the saints, whose festival we will celebrate on Saturday. They are the great multitude who no-one could number (Rev 7:9).
They are aware of our needs, they pray for us, and they help us all the time if we ask them.
But some of us will not be quite ready for the party yet.
That’s because we have sinful traits that are welded onto us like the worst kind of burnt lasagna.
Very few of us will admit to these. But anyone who has lived or worked with you for any length of time can enlighten you about these traits, because they’ve seen them in action.
That stuff has to come off. Maybe our purification after death is like sandblasting all the baked-on awfulness.
Maybe it’s like going through a car wash. Maybe it’s like going through a furnace.
Maybe it’s like all three. But either way, we can speed things up for the people ahead of us.
Help those poor souls who are struggling through the sandblaster right now. Help to pay their debts for them.
You can have Masses said for them, pray for them individually or as a group, and visit a cemetery any time during the first eight days of November.
Ask them for their help. They can’t help themselves, but they can intercede for you.
Teach your children how to pray for these souls as well. Start with deceased relatives or people they knew at Sunday Mass who have now died.
Add them to the family prayers at bedtime. Make praying for the dead as natural as breathing for them – which is what it should be for Catholics.
If love won’t make you pray for the souls in Purgatory, then perhaps enlightened self-interest will start you moving instead?
Think of it as an investment – the best kind of paying it forward.
I’ve always received everything I’ve asked for through the intercession of the Holy Souls.
And I am absolutely counting on their help from heaven when it’s time for me to go through the sandblaster.
