Memorial of the Faithful Deceased

In our church, every Friday before Lent begins, our church takes the time to pray and offer mass and remember our faithful deceased. Many of us are here out of a sense of duty we feel for our beloved family, friends, and love ones.

It is always something heavy to deal with as people spread across the world with some of our closest family relatives living all across the world.

We come to pray for them because we know that once a person dies, while their body is laid to rest in the grave, their soul continues to live on forever in eternity.

At the moment of death, we are receive a particular judgment. Our time for changing our moral identity is over. What we have become, we are forever. For that reason, at this particular judgment ends in either heaven or hell.

It wouldn’t make sense to pray for our dead if someone is in heaven already. Nor would it make sense to pray for them if they are in hell, God forbid. This is where the teaching of Purgatory comes in. People say, where is that in the bible?

In the Bible 2 Maccabees 12:46, it says “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead!”

In speaking of judgment Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny!” Matthew 5:26

After all, nothing imperfect can enter heaven. Jesus says, “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.” We pray for our beloved deceased who have been accepted to heaven, but they are in this stage where they are being purified of those sins, those imperfections, those attachments they still have toward sin. It’s like ironing out the wrinkles of our nature.

And because they can no longer do anything for themselves they depend on the faithful’s prayers here on earth. We can certainly pray for them, offer acts of fasting, and small sacrifices, but there is no more powerful prayer than offering the sacrifice of Jesus in the mass on their behalf.

When they pass, immediately we are flooded with so many different emotions: sadness, guilt, devastation, anger, etc. Sometimes we feel flooded with regret. That we could have we should have done this.

I think with our traditions in the community we do all that we can to cover that. Sometimes our people bring food, flowers, etc. not just out of hospitality but so that we feel that we did something for them.

Jesus today, he mentions this great list, how the people had done certain things like… they have been those who are numbered among the sheep, those welcomed into heaven at the right of the father. They were surprised when Jesus mentioned, this? They were thinking we weren’t doing it for you? We were doing it for this person and person.

He says, when you did it for this person, the least of these, you did it to me.

Notice when are these things done? Is it while they were alive or after death? While they were alive.

In other words the time to serve, the time to do good, the time to give honor to those around you the ones you love is now.

Why? Because Christ is found there and in them.

The most powerful thing we can do for our family members after their death is to pray and offer mass for them.