Crossing the Divide

“It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead.”

(2 Machabees 12: 43-46)

"DO YOU WANT TO SEE something beautiful?” my husband asked as I was blow-drying my hair one morning.  It was rhetorical. “Go look at the computer screen.  My cousin in Norway sent a photo of his family.”

I headed toward the office—and there they were, fresh from cyberspace.  Eight handsome Norwegian faces in full color had enigmatically appeared on our computer screen while we slept.  The photo showed four twenty-something sons, their two beaming girlfriends, and Ole Johann Olsen and his wife, looking like the protagonists of an Ibsen play.

The next morning the cyberspace miracle was repeated, only this time a different set of faces had arrived overnight—a picture taken in 1913, a monochrome of ten or so Norwegians, wearing clothes from a hundred years ago.  Grandma and Grandpa Olsen were at the center, with their brothers and sisters all around, not looking at all like a set of grandparents then, but like newlyweds in their twenties.  The family resemblance between the two photos was remarkable—only the clothes dated them. 

Later, I asked my husband what his thoughts had been, faced with these pixel portraits of his family, past and present.  He responded that there was a kind of discovery of himself in the contemporary family, so far away in geography but so near in blood.  These people have something I have, too, he said.  He wondered what he would feel if he encountered them.  A connection, he thought, like one branch of a tree looking at another branch and realizing they had a common trunk

And the older photo, I asked?  What feelings did it generate? 

These were the brothers and sisters of my grandparents, he responded, and I was awestruck by the fact that they’re all gone—yet they’re not gone.  They continue to exist in God. They also continue to exist in me, he said—this is what I came out of. I discovered a depth of family that I had never thought about before, a new sensitivity to the notion of the family tree. 

As he studied their faces—none of which he remembered seeing—names came to him, names that he remembered hearing in childhood.  There was an awakening. 

One face in particular stood out, a woman—a distant aunt perhaps—whose eyes connected over the years, and he had a desire to pray for her because in God there is no time.  My husband said that, in some new way, he understood the notion of history and why the Mormons pray for the dead.  He realized he could still influence the eternal destiny of his own relatives by praying for them—even those who had lived long before him. 

This notion is in keeping with the teaching of the Church who, from it earliest days, “has honored with great respect the memory of its dead.” (Catechism #958)  The Catholic Church has always encouraged the living to pray for their beloved deceased, teaching that the souls of the faithful departed can be helped by our intercessory prayers.  

In a revelation to Gabielle Bossis, a little known twentieth-century French mystic, Jesus confirms the reality of our union with our deceased.  Gabrielle had written the following: “The priest who had directed me for part of my life had just died and I felt the touch of his blessing still.”  In prayer, Jesus told her:

Believe that in Me My children remain united together.  Members of one Body have only one heartbeat.  There are spiritual heritages held out across the walls of the tomb, and everything comes through Me for the glory of the Father. 

It is because they all belong to the same family and the same home that this oneness between the living and the dead is so great.  The home is My Father’s, and the same Blood—Mine—flows in all the children.

Stay very close to your departed ones.  They are close to all of you. (Bossis, 254-5). 

How consoling this is!  Moreover, the Catechism affirms that “our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.” (Catechism #958)  One can imagine that may of those touching things that happen to us in life are signs of their intercession; for example, an act of kindness offered unexpectedly, a gift given for no reason whatsoever, a financial difficulty suddenly resolved.  They are close, and interceding on our behalf. 

By the same token we, the living, can continue to help them.  This is the reassurance that takes the sting, the victory out of death.  To Gabrielle Bossis, Jesus also said: “The day will come when these people who enter heaven by your help will cry aloud their love and gratitude to you, for love reigns in heaven.”  (Bossis, 295) 

It is awesome to think of standing someday amid the chorus of all our ancestors, those we knew and those we didn't , all sharing in glory.  It’s something to anticipate as we look forward to eternity—even while studying family photos, we look back.

Bossis, Gabrielle.  He and I.  Trans. by Evelyn M. Brown.  Sherbrooke, Canada: Editions Paulines, 1969.

--Contributed by AJS