November every year begins with the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls. During this month we especially remember and pray for those who have died. When we die, we have the hope of eternal life gained for us by the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In order to reach heaven, we must die in the friendship of God and be perfectly purified, as nothing contrary to God can be in his presence. If we die in God’s friendship, even if we are not yet perfect, we can still reach heaven. The Father’s desire is to lose no one, so he is able to complete our purification even after we die, which we call purgatory. This is why we pray for the faithful departed: If someone is in hell, our prayers cannot help them. If someone is in heaven, then they pray for us. But if someone is in purgatory on the way to heaven, then our prayers do much to help them be purified by God’s grace. Since God does not usually tell us the exact state of someone’s soul when they die, we pray for everyone who dies.

One wonderful tradition of prayer for the dead is to visit the cemetery where our loved ones are buried and pray for them there. Why visit the cemetery? First, cemeteries reflect real history. The earliest Christian burial places were private family plots, but the desire for early Christians to be laid to rest near those of their own faith led wealthy Christians to enlarge their family burial places and admit their poorer brethren to share them. Owing to the nature of the soil around Rome, and the desire to imitate the the tomb of Christ, the practice began of excavating subterranean chambers in the recesses of which bodies could be laid and walled in with bricks or marble slabs. These underground cemeteries are known as catacombs. Anniversary feasts to honor the dead were celebrated at these catacombs, and they were used as places of worship during times of fierce persecution. During the 4th century, basilicas were build over the tombs of martyrs, with the altar at the spot of the martyr’s tomb. The eager desire to be buried near God’s holy ones, gradually led to the custom of permitting certain individuals to be interred not only near but within certain churches.

We can find many Christian traditions around the world, for example, in Medieval England of having a procession to the churchyard on Palm Sunday to scatter flowers on the graves. Cemeteries separate from the parish church would often have a mortuary chapel where Mass was celebrated for the souls of the departed, and the practice of blessing the grave or the vault in which any Christian was laid to rest is extremely ancient. Today our parish cemeteries reinforce the notion of community. When we visit our loved one’s grave, we can often recognize those among whom they are lying. These people were Catholics together in life, and now they are together in death. The Catholic cemetery bears witness to a community of faith.

The cemetery is also an important sacramental. Cemeteries make the reality of death and resurrection visible. Our culture often tries to make death as invisible as possible. Young people are sometimes shielded from seeing death, that it might be “traumatic.” Wakes and funerals are sometimes shortened. In some places cremation (which is allowed) has become primary even though the Church prefers full burial of the body. And sometimes we hear the false platitude that “funerals are about the living, not the dead.” Funerals are for the living, but even more so for the dead. Since we believe in the Resurrection, that all who die will receive their bodies back at the final Judgment, Christians have always had great respect for the bodies of our deceased. Cemeteries remind us that the human body, even when dead, is sacred, a temple of the Holy Spirit. The cemetery is an extension of the Church, as the final resting place of those who are part of the Church Suffering and the Church Triumphant – the Communion of Saints. Visiting cemeteries is, therefore, visiting another “part” of the Church.

To encourage the holy practice of visiting and praying at the cemetery, the Church offers a daily plenary indulgence for the souls in purgatory, under the usual conditions (right intention, confession, Communion, prayer for the intentions of the Pope) to those who visit a cemetery in the period of Nov. 1-8. She offers a partial indulgence at all other times. If you go to our parish website, you will be able to find this article with links to download prayers for the cemetery, as well as video examples of these prayers. As Venerable Fulton Sheen once said, when we die, those souls we’ve prayed for – even people who we never met on earth – will be “coming toward us and thanking us. We will ask who they are and they will say: ‘A poor soul you prayed for in purgatory.’” Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the rest in peace. Amen.

Cemetery Visit Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgF2VxjRq1w
Cemetery Prayer Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk6izfW-zm0KuS2hO2sKrOkRoLJ0t25TR
Devotional Booklet: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6KWGd6xtYEqVlhqc2pzemhGY2c

-Fr. Vogel