I want to give a follow up on the book that I talked about in my last post; the St. Robert Bellarmine book on purgatory. To make a long story short, that book really changed me. St. Robert Bellarmine makes an airtight case for purgatory using both testaments, the Church fathers and Church councils. To make a long story short, purgatory exists and St. Robert Bellarmine has proved it beyond reasonable doubt.
Now, I’ve always believed in purgatory being a Catholic. It’s a doctrine of the faith so it must be believed. However there are two parts to belief. There is mental assent and then carrying out the belief. For example, if you believe in transubstantiation there are two components to that. The first is to believe it, and the second is to carry it out. That includes genuflecting before the sacrament, fasting before you receive and other things.
The word purgatory sounds medieval. It does have roots in ancient history as St. Augustine talks about purgatorial fire in his book Enchiridion. Still, when the average person hears the word Purgatory, they think medieval. Now, when someone hears prayers for the dead they immediately think antiquity. Prayers for the dead are essentially as ancient as the Church itself. St. Robert Bellarmine makes the point that the only person in the early Church that rejected prayers for the dead was Arius. I will note that I haven’t double-checked this myself but everything else Bellarmine has said that I’ve double-checked has turned out to be correct so I’m taking his word for it.
Prayers for the dead. Sounds ancient and archaic even to a Christian. If you told the average Western secularist that you pray for the dead they’d probably think you’re a necromancer or have really weird hobbies. Prayers for the dead are the living out of the belief in purgatory. People are in purgatory and therefore we as Christians have to help them out.
I remember several years ago, I was listening to a homily by a traditional priest. He was talking about the importance of praying for the dead. He says that when we get to heaven we’ll see a bunch of people that we’ve never seen before and they’ll thank us for the extra prayers that got them out of purgatory. Since I’ve finished the book, I’ve made prayers for the dead a normal part of my prayer life. I’d recommend everyone at least doing more than they are. Most people are doing none so if you crank it up to one Our Father or one Hail Mary a week for the dead, it’s a step in the right direction.
I want to share a passage from St. Augustine on prayers for the dead. He indicates that prayers, the eucharistic sacrifice(the mass), alms, and good works help the dead. It was normal in his day; let’s make it normal again.
In like manner, funeral pomp and show, a costly tomb, and the erection of rich monuments, solace the living if you will; they profit not the dead. But there is no sort of doubt that the dead are helped by the prayers of Holy Church and the sacrifice of salvation, and by alms, that God may deal more mercifully with them than their sins have deserved.
For the universal Church carries on the tradition which has been handed down by our fathers, that of praying for those who have departed hence in the communion of the body and blood of Christ, by commemorating them at a particular place in the sacrifice itself, and by remembering to offer it also for them. Who indeed may doubt that works of mercy, which are offered up in their memory, relieve them for whose sakes prayer is not vainly made to God?
– St. Augustine, Sermon 172
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