Over the past several weeks, I have had a more-frequent-than-normal exposure to death. Just before Thanksgiving, within a span of six days, we had three funerals here at the Cathedral. We also unexpectedly lost two of our diocesan priests, Father Joe Ring who was 66 years old, and Father Daren Zehnle, who was just 47 years old. Both of these priests were in active assignments, so their loss is all the more difficult. I am also aware of members of our parish who have lost loved ones unexpectedly in the past month. Finally, over the past week, I had the privilege of offering the Last Rites to two individuals who were coming to the end of their earthly journey.
Throughout all of these experience with death, reflecting on how they affect me personally, and how others are affected by those deaths, there is a line from the funeral liturgy that keeps coming back to me. It comes from one of the options for the Preface in the Mass for the Dead. The line goes like this: “Indeed for your faithful, Lord, life is changed not ended.” (Preface I for the Dead) As human beings, made in the image and likeness of God, we know that an essential aspect of our humanity is that we exist in relation to others. First and foremost, we exist in our relationship with God, who is a communion of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Blessed Trinity. We also exist in communion with the many relationships with others here on earth – our family, our friends, and indeed all of humanity. Therefore, when we express that in death “life is changed, not ended”, we can most certainly apply that to these relationships. When we or a loved one dies, our relationships may be changed, but they are not ended.
The Holy Father reflects on this in the next paragraph of Spe salvi as he continues his treatment of Purgatory, addressing how those relationships, changed but not ended, continue to be united especially through our prayer for them:
The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for one another continues beyond the limits of death—this has been a fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it remains a source of comfort today…we should recall that no man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable interactions they are linked together. No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. (SS 48)
As the pope notes, this belief of the connection that remains after death is a source of great comfort to us as we struggle with their physical absence in our lives. If this bond is not broken with death, we can be filled with hope and joy about the promise of what eternal life in Heaven will look like as all of those relationships that began in this life, first with God, and then with others, will be brought to a fulfillment that surpasses anything we ever experienced on this earth. In that regard, we find new peace in the words of St. Paul about our Christian hope in what awaits us, namely that “hope does not disappoint.” (Rom 5:5) While we still struggle here with that separation and may naturally feel sadness, disappointment, uncertainty, etc., let us be reassured in our faith which believes that in death, life is changed, not ended, and that the Lord continues to keep us united to Him and one another through the gift of His grace and love, present most especially in the Eucharist, where we meet Him and our loved ones each time we come to Mass.