PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD

Sir Thomas Browne, recounting the (mildly) heretical beliefs of his younger years, mentions this: “A third there is which I did never positively maintaine or practice, but have often wished it had been consonant unto Truth, and not offensive to my Religion, and that is the prayer for the dead; whereunto I was inclined from some charitable inducements, whereby I could scarce containe my prayers for a friend at the ringing of a Bell, or behold his corpes without an oraison for his soule: 'Twas a good way me thought to be remembred by Posterity, and farre more noble then an History.” This came into my mind – as it often does – when my sister-in-law died a few days ago after what the press not unjustly calls a long battle with cancer. (Curiously, the same press never mentions such a battle as having been won, though an increasing number are.) It is a natural impulse, if one is in any way religious, to pray for the dead.

Catholics have no problem doing so: it has always been part, not only of private devotion but of the Mass itself. It is based on two doctrines: the existence of Purgatory and the Communion of Saints.

Purgatory, between Hell and Heaven, is the Church’s answer to the very natural question, “If I have faith in Christ’s resurrection and saving grace, but am still far from Heaven-ready when I die, how is that contradiction solved?” You will, says the doctrine, spend time – perhaps a very long time – in an intermediate dimension where, as the name suggests, you will be purged, purified, cleansed, and made ready for the eternal Presence of God.  And that purging will undoubtedly be painful. Reading Book I of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, one sees the protagonist, Redcrosse, being purged, at his own request, in the House of Holiness by the wise physician Patience, and a dire experience it is:

In ashes and sackcloth he [Patience] did array
  His [Redcrosse’s] daintie corse, proud humors to abate,
  And dieted with fasting euery day,
  The swelling of his wounds to mitigate,
  And made him pray both earely and eke [also] late:
  And euer as superfluous flesh did rot
  Amendment readie still at hand did wayt,
  To pluck it out with pincers firie whot,
That soone in him was left no one corrupted jot.

And bitter Penance with an yron whip,
  Was wont him once to disple [discipline] euery day:
  And sharpe Remorse his hart did pricke and nip,
  That drops of bloud thence like a well did play;
  And sad Repentance vsed to embay [bathe]
  His bodie in salt water smarting sore,
  The filthy blots of sinne to wash away.
  So in short space they did to health restore
The man that would not live, but earst lay at deathes dore.

In which his torment often was so great,
  That like a Lyon he would cry and rore,
  And rend his flesh, and his owne synewes eat.
  His owne deare Vna hearing euermore
  His ruefull shriekes and gronings, often tore
  Her guiltlesse garments, and her golden heare,
  For pitty of his paine and anguish sore;
  Yet all with patience wisely she did beare;
For well she wist [knew], his crime could else be never cleare.

For Catholics, praying for the dead in Purgatory helped them both by shortening their stay and strengthening their patience and hope.

            But Redcrosse’s purging takes place during his lifetime: the Reformation abandoned belief in Purgatory on the grounds that as we are saved not by our efforts but by God’s freely-given grace, those who are saved will be admitted to Heaven at once. (Hence Browne’s slightly embarrassed insistence that his impulse to pray for the dead was a youthful folly, later corrected.)

            Anglicans, as usual, walk a middle way, and do so in a carefully-maintained fog. The first Book of Common Prayer, of 1549, contained prayers for the faithful departed, but in the more radical 1552 version, and subsequent ones, these were dropped. Anglo-Catholics, however, do pray for the dead, and in a number of middle-of-the-road Anglican and Episcopalian churches this is practiced.

            One of the reasons this can continue to be done is the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, which states that there is – here, now, and always -- a continuum, an essential unity, beteen the faithful of all times and generations. This enables us to address both St Francis de Sales, say, and our recently-departed loved ones: we are in “communion” with them. Of course, this raises the question “What kind of ‘prayer’ can we address to anyone other than God?”

            Again, Catholics have no problem here: we can ask those who have gone before, especially those whom the Church has recognised as models of faith (the “Saints” with a capital S), to intercede for us, put in a good word for us, with God. Again, the Reformation refused this and claimed that while we can venerate the Saints, we cannot pray to anyone but God Himself.  What does this mean in “praying for” the dead? Muslims say, when mentioning the departed from the Prophet downward, “Peace Be Upon Him”.

            What we tend to do – and it is a pretty widespread impulse – is to think, or say, something like “Lord, take this person to You, receive him or her to Your presence and into your love.” And I think that most of us don’t do so with any sense of danger that if we don’t pray for X, X will not be received by God; I think we do it in the trust that X will be so received, but also with the desire to be there for X in these final moments, to add the extra energy of our love and affection to the progress of that soul. Which is really what all prayer for others is and does.