At the heart of most religions, is the fear of death. While on earth we seem to think that we can command and control our circumstances. We can offer sacrifices to the (false) god(s), we can amass money, prestige, and power. But what after death? In the face of this existential question, the answers of all religions fall flat, and fail. They fail because they simply don’t know! They can only offer conjecture. All religions, that is, except the Christian, and more particularly the Catholic, faith.
We have certainty about the response to this question, because of the Man who died on the cross, was buried, and then came back from the dead. It is because of Him, and His Resurrection from the dead, that we accept in confidence what the first reading, from the book of Wisdom, proffers to us:
They seemed, in the view of the
foolish, to be dead;
and their passing away was thought an affliction
and their going forth from us, utter destruction.
But they are in peace.
Brothers and sisters, we hold as an article of our faith, that all those who are baptized, and die in God's grace and friendship, that is, in communion with the Holy Catholic Church, are assured of their eternal salvation (CCC 1030). When our dear ones die, we shed tears; but if cry it must be because we do not know what will become of them; because we do. If we cry, it is only because we are being temporarily separated from them. Because of the passion and death of the Man who was resurrected, we know that we will be reunited with them, and then be separated from them no more.
In the course of this separation, the book of Wisdom we have just read goes on to teach us:
chastised a little, they shall be
greatly blessed,
because God tried them
and found them worthy of himself.
It is another article of our faith, that those who – and this is the great majority of us –having died in communion with the church are still imperfectly holy, must engage in purifying ourselves before we may be admitted into the holy presence of God. Brothers and sisters, one of the things that struck me during my seminary life was how logical, and reasonable, our Faith is. There is a reason for everything, and the entire complex edifice of the Faith ties up in the end! There are no loose ends! Thus, it makes perfect sense that unholiness cannot stand in the presence of holiness. Just as the two poles of a magnet always repel each other. As such, unholiness, even the smallest iota of it, may not be admitted into the presence of God, who is all holy.
It is to get into this sacred, and holy space, that those of us who are still impure, despite having died in communion with the Church, must undergo purification. This place of waiting, of purification, the Catechism teaches us, is purgatory (CCC 1031).
The thing about purgatory, however, is that we can no longer do anything to help ourselves. It is too late to repent once you have died. We do spend time in prayer, as we would when we get to heaven, but it is not for ourselves that we pray, but for others. But all is not lost, of course, because it is through these acts of charity that we purify ourselves and prepare ourselves to enter into the presence of Him who, as Saint Paul teaches today in his letter to the Romans, offered the most perfect act of charity, dying for us while we were still sinners.
Since they cannot in this sense help themselves, the Church has always honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God. In addition to the most perfect sacrifice of the Eucharist, our Holy Mother, the Church also recommends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead (CCC 1032).
This is the teaching of the Church my dear brothers and sisters, so why should we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them.
There is additionally, dear brethren, a bonus to our sacrifices and offerings for the dead – they aid in our own purification and preparation for our own death. In his encyclical Rerum Novarum Pope Leo XII teaches us the eternal truth that has always been the teaching of the Church, that the things of earth cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death (§21). Life on earth, however good and desirable in itself, is not the final purpose for which man is created; it is only the way and the means to that attainment of truth and that love of goodness in which the full life of the soul consists (RN §40).
Let us, therefore, dear brothers and sisters, who are blessed by God, by being baptized into this perfect faith, prepare ourselves, and those who are in purgatory, to “inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Alleluia, alleluia.”
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful in Concanim in the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 2 Nov 2025.)
(Image reference: Mass for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, anonymous author of woodcut.)
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