Jim writes: Can departed relatives pray to God on our behalf? And if they are already in heaven should we keep praying for them? Fr Bernard McGuckian SJ replies.
A quick answer to your double query would be ‘yes’ to the first part of it and ‘no’ to the second.
Purification and glory
In the Liturgy we profess our belief that `for your faithful people life is changed, not ended’. In the prayer, Vigil for the Deceased, we are further reminded that ‘the ties of friendship and affection which knit us as one throughout our lives do not unravel in death’.
This being the case, surely our departed relatives who loved us in this world will not forget us in the next. They can and will come to our help, whether they are in the fullness of glory or still in a blessed state of purification, especially if we ask them for it.
To draw attention to the significant difference between these two different states, the Church has established two very importaut feasts: on 1 November, we honour all who are now in glory on the Feast of All Saints; on the following day, the Feast of All Souls, we remember those in a state of purification, who still need our prayers. However, our relationship with the Holy Souls in Purgatory is not all one-way traffic, any more than it is with our friends here on earth.
Benefits of prayer
If, as you suppose in the second part of your question, our relatives are already among the blessed in heaven it is pointless to pray for them. In this case, we pray to them, not for them. However, in the normal course of events, certainly in the early period after death, it is more charitable to presume that our loved ones would benefit from our prayers on their behalf.
A time-honoured practice is to offer Requiem Mass for our dear ones, that they be delivered from any lingering effects of the sins that like all of us they have committed and which could impede the full vision of God. If, happily, we are mistaken in this presumption, we can be confident that the prayers will not go to waste.
Deaths of saints
Very rarely would we be justified in acting like St. Bernard of Clairvaux when his good friend, St. Malachy of Armagh died in his arms. He was so convinced that Malachy was already in glory that he replaced the Requiem Mass with the Mass of All Saints. The life of St. Francis of Assisi was so extraordinary that immediately after his death he was declared a saint by universal acclaim – or vox populi – with official endorsement coming shortly afterwards.
Within twenty-four hours of his death, St. Margaret Mary was divinely inspired to change her request for prayers for St. Claude la Colombiere into one for prayers to him. In more recent times the mother of St. Maria Goretti, the young Italian martyr, attended her heroic daughter’s canonization in 1950, as did the man responsible for her death. Some of the sisters of St. Thérèse of Lisieux lived to see her canonized in 1925.
In spite of these exceptions, instant canonization is not in the Catholic tradition. Prayer and sacrifice for the dead, a feature of religious practice among the Israelites as recorded in the Book of Maccabees, is still valid in our own era. Judas Maccabees recommended it on behalf of the fallen after the battle against the troops of Gorgias. ‘It is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be released from their sins’ (2 Macc. 12:45).
Three stages
Behind the consoling truth that we can both help our deceased and be helped by them, is the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, something we profess every time we recite the Creed at Mass. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that ‘the Communion of saints is the Church’. Traditionally this Communion comprises three states or stages; the Church Militant, the Church Suffering and the Church in Glory.
The Church Militant comprises all of us currently here on earth. We are all called, with God’s help, to struggle against the temptations thrown at us by the ‘world, the flesh and the devil’. Soldiering courageously on in hope, we can grow in grace and gain further merit.
The Church Suffering is formed by the dead who are undergoing purification in preparation for the fullness of vision. Although they have the consolation of knowing that they are saved, unlike us they can gain no further merit from their sufferings. Although they cannot help themselves, their prayers can help us in our difficulties. However we can help them by our prayers.
Perhaps it would not be inaccurate to see one of the roles of the Church Militant in terms of an army fighting to liberate their imprisoned companions who have no other way of escape. One German lady entitled her book on this subject simply, Get us out of here! It would be hard to think of a more apt title.
The Church in Glory is all those men and women who have reached the heavenly homeland. Because of their closeness to God, they are more powerful than either of the other two groups. The deepest hope of every human person, aware of it or not, is to be in that group at the earliest possible opportunity.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (November 2007), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
