National Catholic Register, by Msgr. Roger Landry: Throughout the month of November, Catholics aim with special dedication to fulfill the sweetest of the spiritual works of mercy, which is to pray for our beloved dead.
We do so of course on Nov. 2, the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (All Souls’ Day), which this year happily fell on a Sunday. The Church remembers our beloved dead not just on this day, however, but makes suffrage for them throughout the year — and with special fervor in November.
We pray for the dead because we know in faith three truths: First, that contrary to the popular — and dangerous — presumption that everyone who dies automatically goes to a “better place,” the Catholic faith does not believe everyone who dies goes to heaven, especially immediately; second, that the dead may need our help; and third, that our prayers and sacrifices can indeed help them.
Regarding the first two truths, the Church teaches that to enter heaven, one must be completely attached to God and radically detached from sin and everything not of God. “Nothing unclean shall enter heaven,” the Book of Revelation affirms (21:27).
Many do not live and die with this purified holiness of life, and hence they need to be decontaminated to enter into the Kingdom in which God is all in all. This state in which the dead are sanitized from all sin and worldliness has been traditionally called by the Church “purgatory,” from the Latin term purgare, which means “to cleanse.”
Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical on Christian hope, posited that the “great majority of people” die in need of such cleansing and therefore go to purgatory. With hope, we pray for them, because in faith we believe that our prayers can in fact help them in this process of purification.
In the Second Book of Maccabees, written about 140 years before Christ’s birth, we see that the Jewish people offered sacrifices in the Temple for slain Jewish soldiers who had betrayed the Lord by carrying underneath their garments various idols captured from their pagan adversaries.
“It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they might be loosed from their sins,” we’re told (12:45). Continuing the tradition of faithful Jews, the Church has likewise prayed for people to be cleansed of their venial sins.
We never know if our beloved dead might have been hiding some sins out of fear or weakness, and we are able to do something far more valuable for them than what was possible for the ancient Maccabeans. We can pray for them during Mass.
“From the beginning,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us, “the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God” (1032).
There’s no greater prayer we can offer for the dead than the Mass, in which we unite our own personal petitions to Christ’s own saving sacrifice offered once and for all during the Last Supper and on the cross.
“Church tradition has always urged prayer for the dead, in particular by offering the celebration of the Eucharist for them,” Pope Francis said in an Angelus meditation on All Souls’ Day 2014. “It is the best spiritual help we can give to their souls, particularly to the most abandoned ones. The foundation of prayers in suffrage of souls is in the communion of the Mystical Body,” and that communion is expressed most powerfully at Mass.
The Church has venerated for centuries this practice of praying for the dead at Mass. In the Eucharistic prayers, we intercede for all those “who have gone before us with the sign of faith” (Eucharistic Prayer I), “who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection and all who have died in your mercy (II), “who were pleasing to you [God] at their passing from this life” (III) and for “whose faith you [God] alone have known” (IV).
In a special way, for more than a thousand years, Catholics have also asked priests to offer Mass for the eternal repose of the souls of specific people who have died.
It’s important to understand theologically what’s involved in offering this practice. Because the sacrifice of the Mass is the re-presentation of Christ’s saving prayer from the Upper Room and Calvary, we know that its fruits benefit the whole Church universally.
There are special graces as well for those who are present and participate in the Mass, in contrast to those who do not attend. But there is also a ministerial or personal fruit of the Mass that the priest may seek to apply to a specific person or purpose, like the intention requested by a member of the faithful who devoutly asks the priest in charity to offer the Mass with that intention in mind.
It is customary for a member of the faithful to voluntarily give something to the priest celebrating Mass for that intention. This is often called a “Mass stipend.” Throughout the centuries, this offering was understood as an alm given to the priest in gratitude for his taking on the commitment of praying for that particular intention in lieu of others. Generally small — today in the United States, it is normally $10 — it was often the only financial income a priest might receive for his upkeep and for the care of the poor entrusted to him.
In many missionary dioceses and territories today, it is still the only income a priest receives, if he is fortunate enough to receive such offerings, normally from abroad. Bishops in missionary territories often have to take on the role of mendicants, begging for Mass stipends for the support of their clergy from national and diocesan offices of The Pontifical Mission Societies or Aid to the Church in Need or other trusted, global pontifical organs.
As the national director of The Pontifical Mission Societies USA, I get several emails a week from bishops in missionary territories asking me if I might send them such Mass offerings. Because of the volume of requests, I normally send 500 or 1,000 Masses at a time, for which the bishops are really grateful, but when they have several hundred priests for whom they’re trying to care, that amounts to a few Masses per priest. One African bishop told me he had nearly 800 diocesan priests in his huge missionary diocese in one of the poorest countries on the planet. I sent him 5,000 Masses, but that meant that each priest in his diocese received about a week’s worth.
I remember speaking to a cardinal in the missionary frontier about how his priests survive only on Mass stipends. He told me, “Monsignor, it’s the same thing with me.” I asked, “You live off $3,650 or so a year?” He laughed and said, “I’m given Mass stipends in euros, and so it’s closer to $4,000. But most of that goes to caring for some of the poor families in the capital, to give something to the catechists and staff and similar things. I try to survive off about $500 to $600 a year.”
The availability of priests, bishops and cardinals in the missions to celebrate Masses is normally a big help to vibrant American parishes, where there are nowhere near as many Sunday and daily Masses in the parish to meet the demand of parishioners requesting a Mass offering for their deceased loved ones and where the wait for an announced Mass can often be a year or more. Hence, their pastors, bishops and many of the faithful turn toward the missions, conscious that Mass is just as valuable for their loved ones when celebrated by a priest in a missionary substation in the jungle.
It’s possible for lay faithful to request Masses (at PontificalMissions.org) be celebrated by missionary priests directly, whether individual Masses, or novenas, or even Gregorian Masses, which is a tradition going back to Pope St. Gregory the Great, who arranged to celebrate Masses on 30 consecutive days for a deceased monk, Justus, from the monastery Gregory had founded in Rome. Justus was posthumously discovered to have sinned scandalously against the rule of poverty. At the end of the 30 consecutive daily Masses, Justus appeared in a dream to a fellow monk, announcing that he had been mercifully purified of his sins and had entered eternal joy with God. It’s practically impossible for parish priests in the United States to celebrate such Gregorian Masses for 30 consecutive days, but priests in the missions can and are very grateful to receive them.
This month, when the Church focuses even more on praying for our beloved dead, it’s an opportunity to continue the focus of World Mission Month and with solidarity solicit the help of hardworking priests in missionary territories to assist in these acts of ongoing devotion and care for our loved ones after death.
Prophetic Link:
“Through the two great errors, the immortality of the soul and Sunday sacredness, Satan will bring the people under his deceptions. While the former lays the foundation of Spiritualism, the latter creates a bond of sympathy with Rome. The Protestants of the United States will be foremost in stretching their hands across the gulf to grasp the hand of Spiritualism; they will reach over the abyss to clasp hands with the Roman power; and under the influence of this threefold union, this country will follow in the steps of Rome in trampling on the rights of conscience.” The Great Controversy, 588.