REQUIEM AETERNAM, GRANDPA

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In my last column, I told the story of an anti-Catholic friend who converted to Catholicism and later died on All Saints Day. In that story I mentioned that November is the month that Catholics especially pray for the dead and said that I would explain why Catholics pray for the dead in a later column. So here goes.

In the Catholic calendar, November 1 is All Saints Day and November 2 is All Souls Day. What is the difference between Saints and Souls?

According to Catholic teaching, Saints are Souls who are with God in Heaven for all Eternity, and Souls, or more specifically, the Souls we remember on November 2, are Souls who are on their way to Heaven but aren’t “there” yet.

So where are they?

The Catholic Church teaches: “All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.” (CCC 1030)

This state of purification is what the Catholic Church calls “Purgatory.” Its existence or the need for it was at the root of Martin Luther’s revolution in 1517 and it remains a major difference between Catholic and non-Catholic (Protestant) beliefs today.

To support the doctrine of Purgatory, the Catechism of the Catholic Church references several scriptures including 1 Cor 3:15, 1 Pet 1:7, 2 Mac 12:46, and Job 1:5. However, I always like to include Revelation 20:13-14 and 21:37.

Revelation 20:13-14 gives us the clearest indication in Scripture of a “third place,” a “place” which isn’t Heaven and isn’t Hell: “The sea gave up its dead; then Death and Hades gave up their dead. All the dead were judged according to their deeds.Then Death and Hades were thrown into the pool of fire. (This pool of fire is the second death.)”

The context is the End of Time and the Final Judgment. So here we are at the end of time and there are Souls (“the dead”) who are in “Death and Hades.” We know this isn’t the final place of damnation (“Hell”) because the scripture tells us that Death and Hades are “thrown into the pool of fire” - the “second death.” That’s Hell.

So if Death and Hades is not Hell, and certainly not Heaven, what is it? And more importantly, who are these “Dead” and why are they there?

This takes us to Revelation 21:27: “nothing unclean shall enter it.” The “it” is Heaven, and the faithful who die in the grace of God (their sins are forgiven), may still be “unclean” due to what the Catholic Church calls “temporal punishment due to sin.”

A short analogy is the scenario of little Johnny being sorry for breaking a neighbor’s window, whereafter the neighbor forgives him, but the window still needs to be repaired. For Catholics, forgiveness and reparation go hand in hand and yet are two different things.

While Johnny is sorry and forgiven for breaking the window, the window must still be repaired (“reparation”) and because God is both all-just and all-merciful, he gives us a chance to pay for a new window so that we are completely “clean” when we enter into the eternal beauty of the beatific vision.

I am very aware of all the “Protestant” challenges to this point of Catholicism, but my intent here is not to engage those arguments and only to share the Catholic belief.

However, these days the real challenge to the belief in a state of post-death purification isn’t so much coming from Protestants as it is from well-meaning pastors, who, in an attempt to console the bereaved at funeral Masses, sometimes homilize the deceased into Heaven, or at minimum, fail to make any mention of Purgatory or “The Church Suffering” - as the “Poor Souls” in Purgatory are referred to in Catholic teaching.

Unfortunately, this penchant to comfort from the pulpit has lead to the trend where instead of begging prayers for the repose of Grandpa’s soul, we “celebrate his new life, “proclaim “he’s in a better place now,” and smile that “he’s no longer in pain,” - attitudes which deny Grandpa prayers and may keep Grandpa suffering in Purgatory longer than he needs to.

My Aunt Rose once told me that my Grandpa’s dying words were: “Never stop praying for me.” He knew he was going to Heaven, but not right away. Requiem Aeternam, Grandpa. Requiem Aeternam.

My paternal grandparents, Elmer and Helen Rohr, at the family farm house near Massillon Ohio, heading off to Sunday Mass. ca. 1936

Tim Rohr has resided in Guam since 1987. He has raised a family of 11 children, owned several businesses, and is active in local issues via his blog, JungleWatch.info, letters to local publications, and occasional public appearances. He may be contacted at timrohr.guam@gmail.com