Notes from All Souls homily

from the Guild of All Souls Facebook

• When people die, well-meaning people will offer very unhelpful words, such as 1) God needs them more than you/us, and 2) they are now an angel, or even your angel. Both of these are theologically incoherent. These are said often because we don't know what to do when someone dies and we don't know what happens when we die.

• There's a good reason for this. The Bible is silent on the mechanics of life after death and the only person to come back from the dead resurrected, had more important items on his agenda, than giving a play-by-play. The Gospel focus is on the what of life after death and not so much the how. Lo! I tell you a mystery, St Paul writes.

• What, therefore, is the church's prayerful reflection on what happens when we die?

• 1. Death is the separation of body and soul. We see this in the death of Jesus Christ. His body was in the tomb and his soul descended to Hell to preach "to the spirits in prison who formerly did not obey" (1 Peter 3.19-20). We affirm this also in the Creed.

• 2. The human person is realized in the union of body and soul. The body is not a mere shell and certainly not a prison from which we seek to be freed.

• 3. The body decays, but the soul does not suffer a natural death, because the soul is spirit. As spirit, it has two powers: intellect and will. The will is fixed at death. If we willed God before death, we would continue to will God. If we willed everything but God, that would also continue.

• 4. There is a process in which those who willed God will come to fulfillment at the Great Day of Judgment. That process is commonly called purgatory. The destiny of the souls in purgatory is not in doubt - they are journeying toward God.

• 5. The Book of Common Prayer would clearly seem to support this. See these prayers on page 488, (emphasis, mine).

• Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of those who depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity: We give thee hearty thanks for the good examples of all those thy servants, who, having finished their course in faith, do now rest from their labors. And we beseech thee that we, with all those who are departed in the true faith of thy holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, in thy eternal and everlasting glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

• Into thy hands, O Lord, we commend thy servant N., our dear brother, as into the hands of a faithful Creator and most merciful Savior, beseeching thee that he may be precious in thy sight. Wash him, we pray thee, in the blood of that immaculate Lamb that was slain to take away the sins of the world; that, whatsoever defilements he may have contracted in the midst of this earthly life being purged and done away, he may be presented pure and without spot before thee; through the merits of Jesus Christ thine only Son our Lord. Amen.
  **purged, purgation, purgatory

• Remember thy servant, O Lord, according to the favor which thou bearest unto thy people; and grant that, increasing in knowledge and love of thee, he may go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in thy heavenly kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.