Praying for the Holy Souls

Now that we're into the month of November, when traditionally Catholics pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, I though I'd take the opportunity to say something about our belief in Purgatory, especially as the readings this Sunday revolve around the subject of life after death, the resurrection of the body and the prospect of our sharing in the fulness of eternal life with God.

The first thing to point out of course is that belief in Purgatory didn't arise out of thin air. It developed through reflection on certain passages of Scripture, from both the Old and New Testaments.

In the second Book of Macabees (chapter 12) these's an account of some Jewish resistance fighters who had fallen during one of their battles against the Greeks. When their bodies were recovered they were found to be in possession of some pagain idols, and their fellow Jewish believers offered prayers for them that even after their death this sin of idol worship would be forgiven by God.

Then in the gospels (Matthew 12:32 for example) Jesus refers to the "sin against the Holy Spirit" which can't be forgiven "either in this world or in the world to come" - implying that there are other sins which can be forgiven even after the end of our life on earth.

Passages like those led the first members of the Christian community to the belief that after we die a purification takes place, when God removes various faults and weaknesses and self-centred motives which still cling to us when we pass the moment of death. He makes us fit to enter into communion with his perfect love and holiness.

So from the earliest times the Christian community prayed for their fellow believers who had already passed away, asking God to carry out this purification. They began praying in this way especially in the Mass, and in every Mass now we still pray for the deceased members of the Church, and for all those who have died, asking God to greet them not with any kind of condemnation but with his forgiveness and love - because only God can really see into each of our hearts, and only God knows and understands the real reasons for our weaknesses and moral failures.

As a matter of fact, one of the strongest reasons for believing that God allows a purification to take place after we've died is that it's completely consistent with his nature and his will for us.

Everything that Christ revealed to us about God points to the fact that he's far more concerned to rescue us from the effects of our sinfulness, and to counter our sinfulness with his compassion and love, than he is to allow us to be lost to him.

Christ's teaching was that even people who have spent their whole life serving their own self-interest, perhaps harming other people in all sorts of ways through their egotism and moral blindness, can still be saved if they genuinely repent - even at the last minute.

And in many ways that's not so far away from the situation that we're all in. When we die, we still have all sorts of blind spots about ourselves, all kinds of unredeemed facets of our character - we still carry some of the weight of our past sinfulness - and it makes sense to see Purgatory as the experience of being confronted with that sinfulness, having it exposed clearly in the light of God's perfect goodness and love, and at the same time growing and maturing further in love and selflessness in a way that we failed to do during the course of our life on earth.

The experience of Purgatory then would mirror the experience we have of growing in openness to God's grace and growing in the spirit of God's love here and now. Men and women who are touched by God at some point, who then start the journey of conversion, can usually look back at their past lives with a sense of guilt about some of the malicious things they've done, and with a desire to atone for what they've done, a desire to repair the harm done to others by their lovelessness. Purgatory must be in some sense a continuation of this journey, the effect of a more direct encounter with God and his holiness and love.

So when we pray for the Holy Souls, as we do especially during November, that's what we're praying for. We're asking God to remain true to his nature: to always tip the scales towards mercy and forgiveness and the gift of salvation on his part, and for an increase in the desire to atone for sin and to complete the journey to holiness on the part of those who have already died.

The belief in Purgatory is a belief that encourages us to reflect on our own death, and to face that moment of encountering God directly with hope rather than with fear - because we're assured that God's wish to change us and save us reaches in a sense even beyond the grave. 

Those are the kinds of thing we can bear in mind when we pray for the Holy Souls during November - most of all the trust we're able to have in God's overwhelming desire to bring us into communion with him, which far outweighs any desire he has to deliver a negative judgement against us.