Comments by Rev. Fr. Don Anton Saman Hettiarachchi, Internet Media Ministry, St. Anthony’s Bible Academy (SABA)
In the month of November, we pray for the dear departed. We strongly believe that the souls in purgatory, the Suffering Church, can be aided by our prayers, indulgences and good works. What is the origin of this time-tested tradition?
Let us scrutinize the classical passage in 2 Maccabees 12,39-46 which lauds in Greek language the excellent, noble way and the holy, pious thought of Judas Maccabeus: “On the following day, since the task had now become urgent, Judas and his men went to gather up the bodies of the slain and bury them with their kinsmen in their ancestral tombs. But under the tunic of each of the dead they found amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. So it was clear to all that this was why these men had been slain … Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out … He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice … Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.”
This Deuterocanonical Text has to be read in its proper historical context. Because of harassment by surrounding people, whose governors provoked hostility, the Jews took up arms in a series of punitive raids and defensive measures. Judas Maccabeus, who led the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire (167-160 BC), realized, following his battle against Gorgias, governor of Idumea, that some soldiers had fallen dead in battle due to their sin – namely, taking as booty or for protection or cupidity, amulets from pagan temples or from the enemy dead, probably in the attack on Jamnia (1 Maccabees 5,58) in gross violation of the Law of Deuteronomy, which had ordered such materials to be burnt: “The images of their gods you shall destroy by fire. Do not covet the silver or gold on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD, your God. You shall not bring any abominable thing into your house, lest you be doomed with it; loathe and abhor it utterly as a thing that is doomed” (7,25-26).
The inspired author makes the sin the cause of their death.
On the other hand, the Jewish soldiers had been defending their homeland against the Syrian Seleucid Greeks and hence they died in godliness. Therefore Judas made atonement through prayers and sacrifices for them, having firmly believed in the resurrection of the just – that those who died piously would rise again. Since they died in a battle for God’s Law, he prayed and offered sacrifices that they would be delivered from their un-expiated sin, which had angered God and impeded their attainment of a joyful resurrection.
The sacred author expressly approves Judas’s action in this particular case and recommends it seemingly for posterity. He further presents the act of Judas as if it were a matter of course or habit of the day and not as a novel or exceptional thing and hence, we may logically conclude that the practice of praying for the dead went back beyond the time of Judas. Jews still utter thrice a day in Aramaic the ‘Mourner’s Kaddish’ after the death of a loved one for eleven months, the time Jewish tradition assigns to the period of purification after death. The form in use in England reads: “Have mercy upon him; pardon all his transgressions … Shelter his soul in the shadow of Thy wings. Make known to him the path of life.”
El Maleh Rachamim is the actual Jewish prayer for the dead. While the Mourner’s Kaddish does not mention death but rather affirms the steadfast faith of the mourners in God’s goodness, El Maleh Rachamim is a prayer for the rest of the departed. It reads: “God, filled with mercy, dwelling in the heavens’ heights, bring proper rest beneath the wings of your Shechinah, amid the ranks of the holy and the pure, illuminating like the brilliance of the skies the souls of our beloved and our blameless who went to their eternal place of rest. May You who are the source of mercy shelter them beneath Your wings eternally, and bind their souls among the living, that they may rest in peace. And let us say: Amen.”
It is reasonable to assume that this practice was maintained in later times and that Jesus and the Apostles were familiar with it; and that the Christian practice of praying for the dead is an inheritance from Orthodox Judaism. Thus in 2 Timothy 1,18, we see St. Paul (or the Pauline School) praying for Onesiphorus, who, having served the Saint in chains and saints in Ephesus, seems to have died before the Letter was written (i.e. the author speaks of his faithful friend as though he is dead): “May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day.”
The ancient catacombs under the city of Rome bear ample evidence that members of the Roman Christian community gathered there to pray for their fellow Christians, who lay buried there. Some of the catacomb inscriptions bear phrases such as ‘Peace’, ‘In peace’, ‘Mayst thou live among the saints’, ‘May God refresh the soul of …’, and ‘Peace be with them.’ Even beyond Rome, the tomb of the Christian Abercius of Hieropolis in Phrygia (2 c. AD) bears the inscription: “Let every friend who observes this pray for me.” In a word, so overwhelming is the witness of the early Christian monuments in favor of prayer for the dead.
The patristic writings too bear ample witness to the Christian practice of praying for the dear departed as though it were already a longstanding custom. Tertullian (2 c. AD) speaks of ‘oblations for the dead’ and “The widow who does not pray for her dead husband has as good as divorced him”, while St. Cyril of Jerusalem (4 c. AD) of ‘supplications for those who have fallen asleep.’ St. Augustine tells us in his ‘Confessions’ of a request made in 387 AD by his dying mother, St. Monica: “All I ask of you is this, that wherever you may be you will remember me at the altar of God.”
Early liturgies too contained prayers for the dead, expressed in primitive language. The following, from the Syriac Liturgy of St. James, may be quoted as a typical example: “We commemorate all the faithful dead who have died in the true faith. We ask, we entreat, we pray Christ our God, who took their souls and spirits to Himself, that by His many compassions He will make them worthy of the pardon of their faults and the remission of their sins.” Both East and West liturgies consisted of the diptychs, or lists of names of living and dead commemorated at the Eucharist. To be inserted in these lists was a confirmation of one’s orthodoxy, and out of the practice grew the official canonization of saints; on the other hand, removal of a name was a condemnation.
Vatican II in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 51, reaffirmed this Judeo-Christian tradition: “This Sacred Council accepts with great devotion this venerable faith of our ancestors regarding this vital fellowship with our brethren who are in heavenly glory or who having died are still being purified …”
Hence let the Church and the Synagogue continue to pray for the dear departed.
