Once a month our community has what we call a “Month’s mind mass” in remembrance of our dead, our community members who have passed on, our loved ones, friends and benefactor and those buried in our ‘Green Cemetery” across the way. I believe that it is a beautiful tradition. Some mornings during the meditation between nocturnes, I will go out in back of our church and during that time will remember those buried there. I knew most of them and took care of them as well before they died.
To pray for the dead is a bone of contention between different Christian traditions. Some believe that to pray for the dead in some way takes away from the saving grace of Jesus Christ and implies that it was somewhat not enough. I have also been told that what Catholics do when praying for the dead, is somehow demonic, like praying to the saints. I don’t bother with it anymore, for to pray for the dead and to pray to the saints makes total sense to me. I am very comfortable with those who don’t agree, even if they do so vehemently. They are after all fellow lovers of the Lord and mean well. Even if they believe I am going to hell, well, that does not matter either. In the end, like it or not, we are all one in Christ Jesus.
We are as St. Paul says beautifully, “There is one body, one Lord” and so death is just a going deeper in and a fuller taking on the ‘Mind of Christ”. I am not sure what that is, but I do believe that it is much more than just the saints being the same as when they died. They are more, for having put on Christ; they are now fully united in him. Since they have the “The Mind of Christ” I believe that they are active in praying for the Church on earth.
Even in human relationships, a purifying process has to be experienced, endured and grown through, if it is indeed allowed to grow. In the marriage vows when a man and a woman make their vows, they are promising that by staying together in good times and bad times, they are promising that they will let go of anything that gets in the way of that relationship. The growth that is required takes a great deal of inner change that can be painful but purifying. If that journey is not taken, then the marriage will become stunted and perhaps die. Friendship is the same thing. The growth needed in order to grow in a deep trust of a friend can be painful and frightening, yet, worth the effort, I believe.
In our relationship with the Lord, I believe the same process is also present but on a much deeper level. Just like in marriage and friendship, there is an active phase and then a more passive one where the compulsion to be in charge is slowly let go of and over a period of time deep healing occurs as well as relationships that endured and continue to grow.
Just as I lose out if I don’t grow in my ability to allow the process of purification to occur in my life with others, the same is tragically true with my relationship with the Lord. The process of sanctification is long and drawn out in this life. If not finished, then this grace-filled process continues. After we let go of the brain in death, what is unconscious in us becomes conscious, we can’t hide anymore from what needs to be healed and purified by the grace of the Lord…..it is not punishment, though like all healing, painful. Just as it is in our experience of deep relationships with others, if rejected then there is only a shallow attachment.
John of the Cross calls it the dark night of the soul. The below is from an article from a catholic site, “Our Sunday Visitor”, written by Emily Stimpson Chapman”. The title being “Understanding the Dark Night of the Soul:
“The dark night of the soul is not an evil to be endured; it’s a good for which we should be grateful. Of course, it doesn’t always seem that way. The thought of plunging into a spiritual abyss and losing all the sweetness in our relationship with God strikes few as appealing. But neither does surgery. Having cancer removed from our bodies isn’t a fun process. Nevertheless, we submit to the surgeon’s knife readily and quickly, knowing that the sooner we have the surgery, the sooner we can live a healthy, full life.
What’s true on the natural level is true on the supernatural level. If we want to become the people God made us to be and live the lives he made us to live, we must let him excise sin and unhealthy attachments from our souls. There’s no getting around it. Before we can enter heaven, it has to happen. It can happen in this life or it can happen in the next — in purgatory. But here is better. For the sooner we let God root out unhealthy attachments, the sooner we can get on with the business of being saints.
And there’s no better business than that.”
In the beginning of the Dark Night of the Soul, St. John says that the dark night is the same as the experience of purgatory…..a grace-filled experience that is needed in order for the soul to respond wholeheartedly to God’s love and grace….which is also a grace.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
