The Church has encouraged prayer for the dead from the earliest times as an act of Christian charity. "If we had no care for the dead," Augustine noted, "we would not be in the habit of praying for them." Yet, pre-Christian rites for the deceased kept such a strong hold on people's superstitious imagination that a liturgical commemoration on the calendar was not observed until the early Middle Ages, when monastic communities began to mark an annual day of prayer for the departed members.

In the middle of the 11th century, Odilo, abbot of Cluny (France), decreed that all Cluniac monasteries offer special prayers and sing the Office for the Dead on November 2, the day after the feast of All Saints. The custom spread from Cluny and was finally adopted throughout the Roman Church.

The theological underpinning of the feast is the acknowledgement of human frailty. Since few people achieve perfection in this life but, rather, go to the grave still scarred with traces of sinfulness, some period of purification seems necessary before a soul comes face-to-face with God. The Council of Trent (16th century) affirmed the concept of purgatory and insisted that the prayers of the living can speed the process of purification. It's this last concept that is undergoing an evolution in Catholic theology and spirituality today.

Reflection
by
Alfred J. Garrotto

I think the key issue is: "When does this purification take place?" Until recently, most Catholics understood purgatory in a kind of human-time sense. We talked about souls being in purgatory for "five (or some other number) years." Quantifying the length of purgation might have made sense in earlier times, but it doesn't make sense to modern Catholics.

Here's how I would explain purgatory (in my imperfect human understanding). There is no such thing as death, really. Death is what we call that instant of transition from one form of life here on earth to another form of life in what we call the "afterlife." We are never really dead, but alive in one way, then another instantaneously. (Death seems real to the survivors who are deprived of the physical presence of their loved one.)

To me, it makes sense to say that at the moment of our transition to that new form of life, we experience a split second of enlightenment that allows us to see the folly of our sinful choices in life. We might say something like, "God, if I'd only realized . . . !" That enlightenment must carry with it a form of spiritual suffering or agony. Then, immediately, God (Father, Son, Spirit) and all angels and loved ones who have gone before us greet us with an embrace that says, "It's okay, don't worry. You're home now."

Spiritual writer Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, puts it this way in his book, Forgotten Among the Lilies: Learning to Love Beyond Our Fears (“Showdown with True Love): “Purgatory is the pain of entering heaven.” He later adds: “Purgatory . . . is the redemptive pain that follows falling in love. It is not an arbitrary punishment for sin. It is the pain of entering community” (with God).

Meanwhile, back on earth, the people who love and remember us, "pray for us," not out of a belief that we are not already with God, but rather as a means of keeping our memory alive in their hearts and as a sign of their own faith that we will all be reunited in heaven.

The old concept of indulgences (ugh!), "praying a deceased person's way to heaven" (and in grosser times in church history "paying people's way to heaven") makes no sense to most modern Catholics (including clergy and theologians). It was the abuse of this way of dealing with Purgatory that led Martin Luther (rightly) to rebel against it.

by
Alfred J. Garrotto
January 2006

Return to RCIA Page