May the souls of the faithful departed
through the mercies of God rest in peace: may light perpetual shine on them.
Dwight
Otto loved and was loved fiercely. That is the all the eulogy I can give. There
is nothing greater to say about a man than that. Most of you know exactly what
I am talking about. In any case he is now deaf to our praise, but not to our
love.
For
we have come not to praise him but to pray and offer the holy Sacrifice for
him. Which is exactly what he would
want. How do I know that? Well, for
years and more so of late he asked again and again for me to pray for departed
family and friends. If you had asked him, why do you pray for the dead, he
probably would have simply said “because the Church has always done so.” I cannot improve on that answer. And if you
had asked him, how exactly this prayer for the dead business works, I doubt he
could have told you. Neither can I. Anymore than I can tell you exactly how
prayer for the living works. The only answer I know of and the only theological
opinion on the subject worth repeating is that of St. Thomas Aquinas: God
‘unmoved, all motion’s source’, the source of all things, from whom alone comes
all good things, nonetheless makes us secondary causes and wills that at least
some things be caused by our prayers. Even St. Thomas does not dare to say
more.
Actually
it is much easier to pray for the dead than to pray for the living. The problem
with the living is that we never really know what we should ask for them. Most
folks who pray a bunch end up just saying the person’s name and asking God to
work his will in X or Y or Z. Otherwise you are like the kid who not only asks
God for a pony but a spotted pony with a silver saddle who will eventually win
the Triple Crown. Or even more likely with adults: Lord, why don’t you straighten out so and so
according to my notions of what he should be or do.
But
in the case of the departed we just say over and over again: “May the souls of
the faithful departed through the mercies of God rest in peace: may light
perpetual shine on them.” Rest, Light and Peace are what we want for the dead
and we can be sure that this is what God wants for them as well.
So,
first of all, we pray for rest. It doesn’t really sound too exciting, I
suppose. I once visited regularly an older lady who took her time dying
and she used to tell me “Father, do not pray that I rest in peace, when I die,
because I have already rested more than enough.” But St. Augustine gives us a
better idea of what ‘rest’ is in his famous words: You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it
rests in you. Resting in Christ is not a matter of doing something or not doing
something. St. Augustine says of God himself that he is semper quietus,
semper agens, that is, ‘always at
rest, always active’. Restlessness, distraction, and busyness is the lot of the
living; but what we want for Dwight is just what God made him for, not only for
us, but for God himself.
That is why we pray for
light: that Dwight might see things more clearly than is possible in the
darkness here. The living are constantly trying to figure out their priorities:
God, neighbor, family, friends, work all vie for our attention. Understandably
we imagine that God does not mind coming at the bottom of the list and of
course he doesn’t. But if only we could see more clearly we would mind. Divine
judgment is simply seeing God and ourselves with all the lights on. The choice
is no longer God and all those God has given me responsibility for but the much
more worrisome choice between God and myself.
Finally, we pray for
peace, perhaps the hardest of our petitions to understand, because it is, as
the Prayer Book puts it, ‘the peace which passeth all understanding.’ It is
simple enough to see what has to happen, if we are to acquire this peace. With
all the lights on we have to choose God. The difficulty is that choosing God
can mean many different things to different people. Dante in the Paradisio describes
the choice of God which leads to heaven: His will is our peace. We
cannot expect in this life to know exactly what that kind of peace feels like
but we can know what it takes to get that peace. Dom Hubert van Zeller says it
best: “when the saint says ‘I choose God’ he is really saying ‘I am not going
to choose anymore: my happiness consists in letting God choose.’ My will is to
do the will of Him who sent me. I live, not now I, but Christ lives in me. I
choose, not now I, but Christ chooses for me.”
“Of your charity” we say “pray for the
faithful departed.” But it is not a charity which gets you much recognition, a
plaque on the wall. It is not a prayer the results you can see and of which you
can be proud. It is has only one
motivation, that of love. Fierce love.
May the souls of the faithful departed
through the mercies of God rest in peace: may light perpetual shine on them.
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