As persons made according to God’s love, we were made to live in community. So it is natural for us to provide mutual support to one another through hard times. When one of us is sick, we visit them. When one of us is grieving, we console them. We reach out and, whether the medium of communication is chicken noodle soup, borscht, a quiet ear, a shoulder to cry on, or a peaceful presence, the message is one and the same: love. This is a large part of what it means to be human.
As members of community, we were also made to accept and receive this support. Walls might go up in the short term – this temptation is a psychological defense mechanism designed to protect us when we are most vulnerable: but these “protections” cannot stay for long if we are to heal. The Armor of God that St. Paul describes is given to us to protect against the assaults of the evil one and his minions – not to keep out the love and support of our brothers and sisters. We should no more reject their love that an injured hand should refuse the oxygen sent to it by the heart, or the strength offered by its adjoining arm.
Why do I speak of these things? Because we have lost our understanding of community (e.g. Putnam’s Bowling Alone), and we have lost our understanding of death. A recent survey or religiosity in America found that a large minority of Americans don’t expect to have a religious funeral. Presumably, this indicates that they don’t see the need or the point of such a thing. It just does not fit into their worldview. Unfortunately, if we do not inoculate ourselves, then this attitude cannot help but affect us as well. And if this happens, then we will have forgotten something more than a nice ritual, we will have lost essential truths about our need for community and about death. This isn’t like forgetting where you left your keys, or how to take the derivative of a complex formula: if we lose this, then we will have essential become less human.
Let me share an analogy that may help explain what I mean: one of the biggest punishments we impose on people is solitary confinement. We threaten to send naughty children to the their room. Unrepentant and dangerous criminals are deprived for a time of contact with others. We do this because we instinctively understand the need people have to be with others. And just as it would be wicked to spank a child or ticket someone who had done nothing wrong, you would think it inhumane to grab an innocent man off the streets and put him into a solitary cell or to lock a child who had done nothing wrong in their room for the evening.
This instinct is correct: it is inhuman to deprive people of community. But if trends in America continue, then we will do exactly this to people we love dearly, people whose only “crime” is that their souls have departed from their bodies. Funerals and memorial prayers are not just given to us to help us “obtain closure” and “move on”; or even (along with weddings) to give family and friends an opportunity to come together and refresh old memories and renew bonds of love. These are real, and they are important. But there is more. Memorial prayers for departed loved ones, along with those we say on our own each morning and night (and every time some memento reminds us of our love) are a natural expression of our humanity. Our community of love is not disrupted by death: how could it be? The soul is immortal. It is true that the body is given to the earth, but it is done so as a seed; a seed whose planting is not forgotten, but rather whose sprouting in perfection is anxiously awaited.
It seems jarring to hear Christ promise again and again that none of those who believe in Him will taste death: after all isn’t that what we do at a funeral? Aren’t we then forced to reckon with death’s bitter taste? But what Christ says is true: Our departed brothers and sisters are not dead. They have joined the righteous in the bosom of Abraham. And so we do not cut them off from our community. We do not shun them, and we do not forget them. The medium of our communication has changed, but the message that it has always carried has not been altered one little bit. Love continues to flow through the body of Christ; nourishing those, who, like us, remain walking on the earth, and continuing to nourish those who have already passed on.
This is the message of the all our prayers for the departed: love continues; community continues. It continues for our loved ones who have reposed just as continues for us now; and just as it will do so long after the time of our own inevitable repose. May God grant us the knowledge and comfort of this truth.
