Jesus said, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you…” (NRSV, Matthew 7:12)

Praying for the departed differs in no way from praying for the living, for in both instances we ask God to help those for whom we are offering up our prayers.  Thus, although the prayers themselves will vary according to the varying needs of the living and the departed, both operate on the same principle.

Prayers for the living are very much wider in scope.  We may pray for someone in hospital, or for people lately bereaved, or for world leaders assembled to discuss international affairs.  In so doing we are calling upon and releasing God’s healing and strengthening power at the material as well as the spiritual level.  In praying for the departed, however, who have passed from this material world, our prayers are necessarily confined to their spiritual needs, and we ask God to help their souls.

The separation of the soul from the body by the incident of death does not in itself alter anybody’s character.  One is exactly the same person after it as before.  The notion that the act of passing from this world is a sort of automatic passport to Heaven is the result of holding a low idea of what God is really like and of forgetting that God dwells in light unapproachable by sinful man (1 Timothy 6:16).

For the all-important fact about the nature of God is his dazzling perfection which demands nothing less than perfection in ourselves before we can fully share it (cf Revelation 7:13,14; 21:27).  As Our Blessed Lord said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (NRSV, Matthew 5:48), and moral perfection is the result of gradual growth not of a sudden transformation.

When we come to die, therefore, we have a long way to go before we are able to enter Heaven, that is, to live in the immediate visible Presence of God himself.  What is set before the soul is a continuation of its spiritual development, and that is achieved by a deepening love for God which in turn makes one’s sorrow for the sins and failures of the past all the more poignant, for there is now the realisation how one has been wounding the Saviour’s Sacred Heart – a realisation made all the more vivid by the sight of Our Blessed Lord himself before whom the soul appears at death and by whom it is then judged.

Thus that love and that sorrow, which the sight of him then kindles within the soul, together quicken and inspire the progress towards perfection of the faithful departed.  So the angel in the Dream of Gerontius described the effect of that sight of the Saviour and Judge by saying,

“And these two pains, so counter and so keen, –
The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not;
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him, –
Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory”. (1)

In our prayers for the faithful departed we ask that they may be given refreshment, light and peace.

Refreshment they do indeed need after the feverish interior conflict in this life with temptation and sin.  It is the spiritual counterpart of a cool draught of water from a deep well at the end of a hot and exhausting day.

Light is the growing knowledge of God and of his love and holiness, and the deepening awareness of his Presence.

Peace is the true harmony with God that comes from complete penitence and full forgiveness – one’s trust and love for him free of all doubt and wavering, one’s will happy and content to be wholly under his Sovereign rule – so that at last the soul understands St Augustine’s famous words, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee”. (2)

So in refreshment, light and peace their union with God through Christ (Hebrews 10:19,20) becomes ever closer until it issues in the eternal bliss of the Beatific Vision, the enjoyment of the visible Presence of God himself.

Our prayers for the faithful departed, besides helping them on in their spiritual progress, also create a bond between us and them through our common sharing in the life of Christ who is both their Lord and ours.  And that bond is closest in the Eucharist, which is his own ordinance uniting in his own Person all the members of his mystical Body the Church – the Church Militant on earth (fighting against evil) with the Church Expectant in Purgatory (waiting to go to Heaven) and the Church Triumphant in Heaven.

So in the Eucharist we offer their Saviour and ours before the Throne of God on behalf of our faithful departed as they continue their pilgrimage along the path of the righteous which, like the light of dawn, “…shines brighter and brighter until full day” (NRSV, Proverbs 4:18).

References

1. Newman, J.H. (1865) The Dream of Gerontius.  Available from:
http://www.ccel.org/n/newman/gerontius/gerontius.htm (Accessed 18 October 2011) (Internet).

2. St Augustine of Hippo (354-430) Confessions, Book I, Chapter I.  (Words quoted above are slightly amended).  Available from:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf101.vi.I_1.I.html (Accessed 18 October 2011) (Internet).