HomeALL SOUL’S DAY
In the Christian tradition, All Soul’s Day is a day of prayer that aims, in part, to release souls from Purgatory and help them enter Heaven. In the Universalist tradition, all soul’s go to heaven, though some believed in a kind of Purgatory. If such a place exists, how long will you be there?
Good Morning!
All Soul’s Day is a day of remembering the dead, especially those who were most dear to us.
In this time of autumn, with falling leaves and shorter hours of daylight, the world around us can instill thoughts of the passing of life, of the brevity of life, and of those already gone. It somehow seems natural in this season to think of loss. How much more would it have seemed that way in a time when only the fire on the hearth and perhaps a candle or two gave any light to the space people lived in.
As most of us already know, October 31 is the date of the old Celtic festival of Samhain. Ancient Celtic days were reckoned from night fall to night fall, so Samhain began on the evening of October 31 and lasted until the evening of November 1. For the Pagan Celts, Samhain was a day of commemoration of the dead when one prepared food and beds for the visitations of the now passed away of one’s family.
The Christian Church attempted to stamp out the Pagan Samhain celebrations by banning them and then, when that did not work, by naming November 1 as All Saint’s Day, when the Christian Saints and martyrs were celebrated. This was not sufficient as people still felt a need to in some way take care of their ancestor’s and their loved ones who had passed away, so Pagan ceremonies continued. The Church therefore instituted All Soul’s Day on November 2, which was a day given over to remembering the dead and saying prayers for them, especially for those who were in Purgatory—remember that in Christian theology the truly wicked go to Hell, where they are beyond help or redemption; and the truly good to Heaven, where they are not in need of help; and the rest of you go to Purgatory to work off your sins. Only after one’s sins have been purged will one be eligible for Heaven, but those in Purgatory will ultimately reach Heaven.
Purgatory, or a purgatory like state, is not a concept unique to Christianity.
In Hinduism there is Naraka, a word for the Abode of Darkness (Literally, "pertaining to man”). Naraka, often translated as “Hell”, is envisioned as ”the lower worlds”.
From an on-line Hindu site:
“Naraka is a congested, distressful area where demonic beings and young souls may sojourn until they resolve the darksome karmas they have created. Here beings suffer the consequences of their own misdeeds in previous lives…Scriptures offer other lists of hells, numbering 7 or 21. They are described as places of torment, pain, darkness, confusion and disease, but none are places where souls reside forever. Hinduism has no eternal hell.”
So, if hell not eternal, it is really a place like purgatory, is it not? You work off your temporary sins and then are reborn into the world. (Remember that in Hinduism the ultimate goal is escape from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.)
In Buddhism, not surprisingly, concepts of hell are similar. There are many Buddhist Hells, all of which are temporary; just as in the Buddhist heavens, one stays there only until such time as the karma which got you into heaven or hell lasts. After that, you are reborn into the world. (Buddhists say that rebirth from Heaven is a good thing, because Heaven is so pleasant that if you stayed there you would have no motivation to reach Nirvana.)
In Judaism there is a claim of atonement for the dead in the book 2 Maccabees. There, Judas Maccabeus discovers that some who had fought against the Greeks during the Maccabee uprising had worn amulets of other gods. The book says the following:
He also took up a collection, man by man, to the amount of two thousand drachmas of silver, and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin-offering. In doing this he acted very well and honourably, taking account of the resurrection. For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. But if he was looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Therefore he made atonement for the dead, so that they might be delivered from their sin.
So in Judaism, or a least in Intertestamental Judaism, there existed the idea that one could atone for someone else’s sin and therefore affect the outcome of the judgment to be faced by them.
In Christian theology, certainly in Catholic theology, there is an efficacy to prayers for the dead.
Over time there have been various lists of prayers and rituals along with the amount of time they shave off from someone’s sojourn in Purgatory, often hundreds of years—and you can pray for either yourself or others. These prayers and rituals are called Indulgences; by the time of Martin Luther you could purchase Indulgences, which had become such a big business that one Bishop published a training manual for the sales force—Priests and Bishops. It was said by some Priests and Bishops that “so soon as the penny jingles into the money-box, the soul flies out [of purgatory]”.
It was partly his negative reaction to Indulgences that brought Luther to his position that it is only through faith that people are saved, not through works whether good deeds, charity or Indulgences. On October 31, 1517, Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, beginning the process that would lead to the Reformation, so within the Protestant tradition October 31 is celebrated as Reformation Day. These theses were all about indulgences, purgatory and the true path to redemption.
In Islam as well some see a hint of a purgatory in Qur’an Sura 7, which speaks first of Heaven and Hell and then says:
[7.46] And between the two there shall be a veil, and on the most elevated places there shall be men who know all by their marks, and they shall call out to the dwellers of the garden: Peace be on you; they shall not have yet entered it, though they hope.
The extreme action of the sale of Indulgences which Luther railed against is just one problem with the idea of Indulgences, of prayer for the dead as a means of easing their suffering. I have others, which speak not o the extremes that can be reached, but to the very idea of prayer for the dead.
Does God really change the amount of time of purging, the degree of punishment for sins, based upon the number of prayers for an individual by others? Is God’s will that full of whim? Is God’s decision really so malleable that human prayers can change it?
There is something inherently unfair in that idea when it is applied to suffering and penance. Why should one person’s suffering be eased by prayer while another person, with no one to pray for them, must remit penalty in full, so to speak?
Now some will say that if a person has lived a good life and been kind to others, there will be prayers for them; and people who have isolated themselves from others or have not been kind then are deserving of the lack of prayers they receive. But wouldn’t that all have been taken into account in the big ledger book in the sky? Wouldn’t God or Karma or the Cosmos already take that into consideration in setting the amount of penalty one must suffer?
And that explanation, that we get prayers if we deserve them, leaves out those who lack the prayers of others through no fault of their own.
For example, what of people who have no children or other family to pray for them? Perhaps they never married or were unable to have children.
What of, say, a Baptist or Atheist convert to a religion that practices prayers for the dead, where the family doesn’t believe in Purgatory and so does not pray for the person. Does that not mean that he or she will spend a longer time in Purgatory than someone who has committed precisely the same sins but whose family does pray? Where is the justice in that?
This is the same reaction I have to prayers for healing or for trying to send hurricanes on a different path; there is no rational justification in my mind for supposing that the powers that be will heed prayers.
My Unitarian heart insists that prayer for others cannot sway the universe. My Universalist soul insists that all are immediately saved anyway, so prayers are unneeded.
And yet, and yet, it has been human belief and hope across the millennia that prayers and rituals do work both in this world and in a visioned world beyond this one. Throughout the millennia humans have engaged in actions to influence the world around them: sacrifices to the gods, incantations and spells, Abraham bargaining with God to save Sodom, or Celtic and Catholic prayers for the dead; there is something in us that hopes we can affect the world around us, change the course of events and give comfort to those far off, even to those beyond this life.
We here in this room light candles for others, hoping that prayer or thought or some vibration in the fabric of the universe will bring hope and comfort to those in need. Some of us do this even though we are among those who deny the efficacy of such acts.
There is that in the human heart which hopes against hope for the ability to influence especially the lives of our loved ones. This is a hope that exists within that part of our soul that lies beyond the realm of reason; it is untouched by logic. We may rationalize it, we may come up with reasons and logic to explain it, but it is based in longing and love.
Neanderthals buried flowers with their dead; Celts laid out meals and fresh bed clothes. What the Church could not suppress within the Celtic soul, many of us cannot suppress within our own souls; nor should we.
From the time of our ancient forebears the human soul has insisted upon good wishes, good thoughts, good prayers for others and for those passed out of this life. It is important to us to remember them, to honor them, to send love to them.
May this day be a day of offerings of comfort and hope, of flowers and prayers, of food and bedclothes to our loved ones who have departed. Even if these gifts are only visions in our minds, may they be real to those who have passed beyond the veil of this life.
And may we take such comfort as we can in memory and remembrance, in mourning their loss and in celebrating their lives. May their presence be real to us, and may we each draw comfort for ourselves from whatever our personal practice of memory may be. So let it be.
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