By Francis A. Baker
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
“And when He came to the gate of the city, behold a dead man was carried out.” Luke 7:12
I
A
It is not at the gate of Naim only that such a procession might be met. From every city “dead men are carried out to the grave” – nay, from every house. Death knocks alike at the palace and the cabin. It is only a question of time with him. Sooner or later he comes to all.
B
Yes, my brethren, a day will come to each home in this parish when a piece of black crape at the door will tell the world that death has been there. Within there will be stillness and sadness, and in some darkened chamber, wrapped in a winding sheet, will lie the cold and lifeless form of some beloved member of your family – a father or mother; a wife or husband; a brother or sister; a son or daughter.
C
After a little while even that will be taken away from you. The time of the funeral will come. The mourners will go about the streets, and the dead will be buried out of your sight. I do not speak of this to make you sad. On the contrary, what I am going to say will, I know, be a source, the only real source, of comfort to you in the loss of your friends.
D
I
wish to remind you of your duties to the dead. Christianity does not
permit us to bid farewell forever to our departed friends. Death, it tell
us, does not sever the bond of duty and love between us and them. We still
have duties toward them, and in the performance of those duties, while we are
doing good to the dead, we are procuring for ourselves the best solace.
What are those duties?
II
A
First: To
give back the dead resignedly to God. It is not wrong to weep for the
dead. It is not wrong, for we cannot help it. It is as impossible
not to feel pain at such a separation as it would be not to suffer when the
surgeon’s knife is cutting off an arm or a leg; and, what nature demands, God
does not forbid. Therefore the Holy Scripture says: “My son, shed tears
over the dead; and begin to lament as if you had suffered some great harm.”
B
Do you think that poor widow of whom the Gospel speaks today could help weeping? She had known sorrow before, but then she had one support, a dear and only son. He was a good lad. Everybody knew and loved him. But now he too is gone. It is strange that he should go and she be left behind, but so it is; there lies his body on the bier, and she is following him to the grave.
C
See her as she goes along in her coarse black dress, bent with age and sorrow. Can you blame her for weeping, as she looks, for the last time, on that dear form? At least, Jesus did not blame her. He looked at her, and He sorrowed with her. He was moved with compassion. It is not wrong, then, to weep for the dead, but we must moderate our grief, banish every rebellious thought from our heart, and mingle resignation with our sorrow.
D
The Office which the Church sings over the dead is made up in great part of joyful psalms and anthems. After this pattern ought to be the sorrow of a Christian family, a sorrow that is not violent and noisy, a sorrow that does not pass the bounds of decency, a sorrow, I may say, mingled with joy.
E
How different it is in some families! You come near a house and you her shrieks the most appalling. You go in and find a woman abandoning herself to the most noisy and violent grief. Her language is little short of blasphemy. She refuses any comfort. She is weeping over a dead husband. Perhaps in life she loved him none too well. Perhaps she made his life bitter enough to him, and often prayed that some harm might happen to him, and that she might see him dead.
F
And now she does see him dead. She will never curse him again, and he will never anger her again. He is dead; and now she breaks out into the most frantic grief, and alarms the neighborhood. She cries; she calls upon God; and throws herself on the corpse. At the funeral her conduct is still more wild and disordered. Now, what is all this? I will not say it is hypocritical, but I say it is brutish.
G
It is not to act as a reasonable being, much less as a Christian. This is the way with some women. The only time they ever show any love to their husbands is when they are dead. Let them be: such grief will not last long. Wait awhile; before her husband’s body has well got cold in the ground she will be looking around for another match.
III
A
Do not imitate such unchristian conduct. When Death enters your house, do not forget that you are a Christian. Do not indulge your grief. Call to your aid the principles of your faith. You are sad and lonely. Well, is it not better to feel that this life is a state of exile? You have lost your protector. And has not God promised to protect the orphan? You have lost such a good friend, such a bright example. Well, ought you not, then, to rejoice at his safe departure?
B
The early Christians used to carry flowers to the grave, and sing hymns of joy because the toils of a Christian warrior were ended, and he had entered into rest. Hear what the Church sings: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” Will you weep because one you love is taken away from sin, from temptation, from the trouble to come? Will you grieve because he has secured for himself the Blissful and Eternal Vision of God?
C
But you have no confidence that he was good, that he did die in the grace of God. Suppose you are uncertain on that point, is there anything better than to go with your doubts and fears before the Holy God, and while you offer to Him your trembling prayers for the departed, to adore His Providence and say: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21) Dry up your tears, then, O bereaved Christian. “Make mourning for the dead for a day or two.” says the Holy Scripture.
D
That is, do not abandon yourself to grief. Do not think, because your friend is gone, that God is gone, and Christ is gone, and duty gone. Do not call on others more than is necessary. Resume your ordinary duties as soon as possible – and in these duties you will find the relief which God Himself has provided for our sadness, and His Grace will accompany you in the performance of them.
IV
A
Another duty to the dead is to perform scrupulously, as far as possible, their last directions. When the patriarch Jacob was dying, he called his son Joseph to his side, and said to him: “You shall show me this kindness and truth, not to bury me in Egypt, but I will sleep with my fathers, and you shall take me away out of this land, and bury me in the burying-place of my ancestors.” (Genesis 47:30) It was not of itself a very important request; it was, moreover, an inconvenient one. Yet see how promptly and carefully it was complied with.
B
As soon as the days of mourning for Jacob were ended, Joseph went to Pharaoh and said: “My father made me swear to him, saying, You shall bury me in my sepulcher which I have dug for myself in the land of Canaan. So I will go and bury my father and return. And Pharaoh said to him, Go up and bury your father. And they buried him in the land of Canaan, in the double cave which Abraham bought for a burying-place.” (Genesis 50:13)
C
Would that the same piety were always seen among us! A mother dies: the last wishes that she expresses to her children are that they should be true to their holy faith and earnest in seeking the salvation of their souls, and she sends a message to an absent son, which will not reach him in his distant home till long after she is gone, begging him to be faithful and regular in his duties as a Christian.
D
A father dies, and tells his son of a debt, strictly due in justice, but of which there is no record, and where he will find the money to pay it. A poor girl dies, and confides to someone, whom she thinks her friend, the little earnings of her hard labor, asking that it may be sent to her old mother in Ireland.
E
Are these wishes executed? Are these children faithful Catholics? Is that boy, the object of a mother’s dying tears and prayers, regular at the sacraments? Has that debt been paid? Did the sad news of the daughter’s death go out to the poor mother in the old country, softened with the evidence of that daughter’s piety and love? Or was the money retained and squandered? What! Are you not afraid to add to the sin of irreligion and injustice the crime of breaking faith with the dead? Hear what God says in the Holy Scripture: “The voice of thy brother’s blood cries to Me from the earth.” (Genesis 4:10)
F
The dead have got a voice, then – a voice that cries to God, that cries for vengeance against those who injure them. Pay, then, your debts to the dead. Redeem the promise you have made to the dying. Fulfill your duties as an executor or administrator with fidelity and justice. Be exact. It is a dead man you are dealing with. Do not say, he is dead and cannot speak.
G
Hear what the Law of God says: “You shall not speak evil of the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind: but you shall fear the Lord your God, because I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 19:14) Do you understand? God hears for those who cannot hear, He speaks for those who cannot speak; and if you make the dead your enemy, you have the Living and Eternal God for a foe.
V
A
Another part of our duty to the dead is to treat their bodies with respect, and to give them decent burial. We do this for two reasons: for what they have been, and what they are to be. Their bodies have been the casket which held their souls, and we love their bodies for what their souls have been to God and to us. We love the eye that looked upon us with affection, the mouth that spoke to us words of truth and kindness, we love the ear that listened to our sorrows, and the hand that soothed and blessed us.
B
We love that body which was the soul’s instrument here in her works of piety and Christian charity. And we love that body for what it shall be. We see it as it will be when it springs from the grave on the morning of the Resurrection, sparkling with light, beautiful and immortal. And this is why we follow the dead to the grave. We go with them as we go part of the way home with a cherished guest. We go with them in token that the love that united us is not severed by death, but that we are still joined to them in hope and charity.
C
Oh yes, it is right. Let the body be laid out decently; the limbs composed; the eyes closed for their long sleep. And when the time of burial comes, let all the ceremonies of the Holy Church lend their aid. Walk slow; let the priest in surplice and stole go before; light the candles and hold the cross aloft; sing the sweet and solemn chant; carry the body to the church and lay it before the Altar of God; bring incense and holy water, and let there be High Mass for the repose of the soul.
D
Fitting ceremonies! Beautiful and touching rites! Chosen with a heavenly still to comfort the mourner and to honor the dead. But alas! alas! How do we see this duty to the dead sometimes fulfilled! A Catholic is dead. It is true there are candles and holy water, but where are the pious prayers? The neighbors are gathered together, but it is not to pray. The glasses and the pipes speak of a different kind of meeting. Yes, they have come there, there to that chamber, the Court of Death and the Threshold of Eternity, to hold a drunken wake.
E
The night wears on with stories, sometimes even obscene and filthy, and as liquor does its work, curses and blasphemies mingle with the noisy, senseless cries and yells of drunken men. Are these orgies meant to insult the dead? Do these revelers wish to make us believe that their departed friend was, body and soul, the child of Hell as much as they?
F
So the wake is kept, and now for the funeral. The man died early in the week, but of course he must be buried on Sunday. Sunday is the worst day of the week for a funeral, because it is the day appointed for the public worship of God, and it is wrong to draw men away from the church on that day without necessity, yet a funeral must by all means be on a Sunday. And why? Because a greater crowd can be got together on that day, and the object is to have a crowd, and to make people say, such a one had a decent funeral.
G
The family is poor, nevertheless a large number of carriages are hired, and filled with a set of people who regard the whole thing as a picnic or excursion. Some of them have already “taken a drop,” and so little sense of religion have they left, that sometimes at the grave itself, sometimes in returning from it, they raise brawls and riots that bring disgrace and contempt at once on the man they have buried and the faith they profess.
H
Do you call this a descent funeral? I say it is a sin. A sin of pride and ostentation. A sin of scandal and excess. A sin of robbery and cruelty – of robbery and cruelty toward the poor children from whose hungry mouths and naked backs are taken the extravagant expenses of this ambitious display.
I
How much better to have a small funeral! A funeral remarkable for nothing but its modesty and simplicity, to which only the few are called who knew the dead and loved him, who follow him to his long home with serious thoughts, like thinking men and Christians, remembering that before long they must go with him into the grave and lie down beside him, and who return home to remember his soul before God as often as they kneel down to pray.
VI
A
And this brings me, in the last place, to speak of the duty of praying for the dead. It is a most consoling privilege of our holy faith. Death indeed fixes our eternal condition irrevocably. “If the tree fall to the south or to the north, in whatever place it falls, there shall it be.” (Ecclesiastes 11:3) But the good do not always enter heaven immediately. If the sharp process by which God purifies His children on earth has not wrought its full effect, it must be carried on for a while longer in that hidden receptacle in which faithful souls await their summons to the presence of God. And during this period our prayers in their behalf are a great avail. No part of our religion has more undeniable proofs of its antiquity.
B
As far back as the fourth century of the Christian era, St. Cyril testifies that it was the custom “to pray for those who had departed this life, believing it to be a great assistance to those souls for whom prayers are offered while the Holy and Tremendous Sacrifice is going on.”
C
The tombstones of the early Christians attest the same practice; and St. Augustine, speaking not as a doctor, but recording a chapter of his own history, lets us into the innermost feelings of the Church of his day on this subject. In his Confessions he tells us that his mother St. Monica, shortly before her death, looked at him and said: “Lay this body anywhere, be not concerned about that, only I beg of you, that wherever you be, you make remembrance of me at the Lord’s Altar.”
D
And the saint goes on to tell how he fulfilled this request, how after her death the “Sacrifice of our Ransom” was offered for her, and how fervently he continued to pray for her. But his own words are best: “Though my mother lived in such a manner that your Name is much praised in her faith and manners, yet . . . I entreat you , O God of my heart, for her sins. Hear me, I beseech Thee, through that cure of our wounds that hung upon the Tree, and that sitting now at Thy Right Hand makes intercession for us.
E
I know that she did mercifully, and from her heart forgave to her debtors their trespasses; do Thou likewise forgive to her her debts, if she hath also contracted any in those many years she lived after the saving water. Forgive them, O lord, forgive them. . . . Let no one separate her from Thy protection. Let not the lion and the dragon either by force or fraud interpose himself. Let her rest in peace, together with her husband; and do Thou inspire Thy servants that as many as shall read this may remember at Thy Altar Thy handmaid Monica, with Patricius her husband.” (Augustine’s, Confessions, book 9.13.36)
F
Are we as faithful to pray for our departed friends, and to get prayers said for them? They wait the time of their deliverance with painful longing. They cannot hasten it themselves. They cannot merit. Their hands are tied. They are at our mercy. The Church indeed prays for these in her litanies, her offices, and her Masses, but how little do we, their friends and relations, pray for them.
G
The patriarch Joseph, when he foretold to Pharaoh’s butler, his fellow prisoner, his speedy restoration to honor, said to him: “Only remember me when it shall be well with you, and do me this kindness to put Pharaoh in mind to take me out of this prison.” (Genesis 40:14)
H
But the butler, when things prospered with him, forgot his friend. So we forget our friends in the prison of Purgatory. They linger looking for help from us, and it comes not. Oh, pray for the dead. Death does not sever them from hope, from prayer, or from the power of Christ. Did not Martha say to our Lord in reference to her brother Lazarus, who was already dead: “I know that even now whatsoever you will ask of God (in his behalf) He will give it to you!” (John 11:22)
I
Yes, Christ’s Mercy and Christ’s Bounty reach even to the regions of the shadow of death. Christ has in His hands gifts even for the dead – gifts of Consolation, of Refreshment, of Quiet, and of Rest. Ask those gifts for those you love. With the widow of Naim carry your dead to the Savior, let your tears and prayers in their behalf meet His Compassionate Ear and Eye, and He will speak to the dead: “Young man, I say to thee Arise.”
J
And the dead shall hear His voice, and shall rise up, not yet to the Resurrection of the Body, not yet to be “delivered to his Master,” but to the company of the Angels, to the spirits of the Just, to the home of God, where they shall be “before the Throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His Temple, and He that sits on the Throne shall dwell over them. And they shall not hunger nor thirst any more; neither shall the sun fall on them, nor any heat.” (Revelation 7:15,16)
VII
A
I
have endeavored today, my brethren, to speak
for the dead. They cannot speak for themselves, but they live, and feel, and
think. And sure I am that, if they could speak, their words would not be
in substance very different from what I have
spoken. They would say: “I want no costly monument. I want no
splendid funeral. Still less do I wish that God should be offended on my
account.
B
I ask a remembrance mingled with affection and resignation, the rites of the Holy Church, a quiet grave, and now and then a fervent, earnest prayer. And I will not forget you in my prison of hope. I will pray for you, and oh! When the morning comes, and my happy soul is called to Heaven, my first intercession at the throne of God shall be for you, whom I loved so well in life, and who have not left off your kindness to the dead.