In Latin countries, and possibly in Eastern Europe also, it is demotically known as le jour des morts, the Day of the Dead. Chrysanthemums are put on graves freshly cleaned and full of photographs of the deceased. Officially, the Catholic churches, Roman, Orthodox and Anglican, refer to it as the Feast of the Souls of the Faithful Departed, or All Souls' Day. Its purpose was, and mostly still is, to pray for the souls of those who have left this life, to help them on their way, to assist them in Purgatory and to aid them in the progress of the purgation that will ready them for Heaven. There is something deeply comforting in this schema, which intellectuals may doubt but cannot disprove. How it can combine with the equally strong, and to many comforting, belief that the deceased loved ones watch over those of us still in the world is not clear; but we may perhaps reply with Tertullian, Credo quia impossibile, I believe because it is impossible, or with Christ, To the Father nothing is impossible.
There is nothing one can say about death that has not been said so many times before that it is commonplace. It is absolute: that bourn/ from which no traveller returns. (Except, of course, he whose love was stronger.) We are prevented from knowing what, if anything, takes place beyond the curtain. Also, it is usually accompanied with pain and grief, both sometimes excruciating. We can discuss it only in images; and there are two of those I have always found consoling.
The first comes to one when one stands beside a waterfall. One sees a twig, perhaps, or a leaf, borne tranquilly upon the stream towards an edge of which it has no idea. Then it disappears into the crashing maelstrom of white foam and booming noise. And then, at the bottom, we see it surfacing, rather awkwardly at first, and continuing on its way downstream. So, in the days when the thought of death haunted and terrified me, my mantra was The river flows on below the falls.
The second image is that of the caterpillar, which (as far as we know) lives its laborious and earthbound life in complete ignorance of the glorious butterfly it will become when that stage of its living is finished. If we do not know what happens to us after death, it is perhaps because there is no need for us to know: it might ruin our caterpillarity if we did.
What we do know is that Love is stronger even than death. Not, now, in the sense that true lovers can face it together or remain true after the decease of one; no, in the sense that the One who was Himself true Love did not refuse that road, took it for our sake, and emerged on the other side, first to broil fish on a lake beach and to invite his stupefied mourning friends to breakfast, and finally to precede us to his, and our, Father's house.
The thought that by the time we die we are not perhaps exactly ready for that new house, that our wedding garment in rumpled, stained, a little torn and in serious need of a hot iron, should make us deeply thankful for the doctrine of Purgatory. We are told that our stay there will be hard work and not always agreeable; but there is light and warmth and welcome at the end. Our love and assistance should go to those who are already there and whom our support will hearten in their tasks; our pity should be reserved for those who have made themselves incapable of even desiring God's love and to whom, as C.S. Lewis wrote, His presence in æternitatem would be torture. They dwell in outer darkness, capable of receiving only that final mercy of His absence.
Will they do so forever? Is the 'gnashing of teeth' eternal? Theologians from Origen on have doubted, even as stern moralists have insisted. The word to remember in this context is apokatastasis or "restoration": the idea that at the end of time everything will be "restored" to its original state -- and the original state of man, of course, was sinless. Some theologians have even extended apokatastasis to Lucifer and his fallen angels, maintaining that eventually the whole of Creation will be "saved" -- restored to a harmonious and loving relationship to its Creator.
In the meantime, let us remember those who have preceded us, let us send them the loving thoughts and prayers that they will surely welcome.
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