In addition to celebrating the feasts of saints on the same day each year, the Church has traditionally designated each month to a particular devotion. This devotion typically centers around a major day in the liturgical calendar from that month. Thus, October is the month of the Holy Rosary (October 7th is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary), December is the Month of the Immaculate Conception (the Solemnity of which is on the 8th of December), and November is the Month of the Holy Souls in Purgatory.
As Catholics, an integral part of our faith is praying for those who have died—our loved ones and friends “who have fallen asleep in the hope of the Resurrection and all who have died in [God’s] mercy.” In doing so, we follow the tradition of our Jewish fathers and mothers in faith who believe “it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins” (2 Macc. 12:43-46).
Additionally, Christ declares that those who sin against the Holy Spirit by despairing and not seeking out God’s mercy “shall not be forgiven neither in this world, nor in the world to come.” From the earliest days of Christianity, this saying of Our Lord has been taken to mean “some sins will be forgiven and purged away by a certain purifying fire” after our death, as St. Isidore of Seville wrote. If Heaven, the Beatific Vision, is to see God face-to-face, many of us who die with the sacraments of the Church and in a state of grace will need extra purification at the end of our lives to “be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.”
Braving the twenty-minute walk home from campus this semester, as many juniors coldly rejected by the Office of Residential Life do, has been a blessing as much as much as a struggle. Walking along Commonwealth Avenue, if one looks up from their phones or the lonely solo cups left from nights prior, one’s gaze is drawn to the Evergreen Cemetery. Filled with the sepulchers of those long passed amidst leaf-strewn hills, it is the quintessential “spooky sight” on the cloudy autumn days that New England seems to serve without relent.
The Book of Sirach extols us, “In all you do, remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin” (Sir. 7:36). The practice of momento mori—remembering one’s death—has allowed Christians throughout the ages to keep in mind the temporality of this life, and the eternity of the one to come. It has inspired fantastic art, from the mediaeval poem Dies Irae and its infamous setting by W.A. Mozart, to Hans Holbein’s Danse Macabre woodprints, to countless Vanitas still-lifes and paintings of skulls which remind us of one thing. We cannot be certain of the day or the hour, but we can rest assured that this life will someday come to an end.
Too often our culture urges us to forget that each of us are dying. It is all too easy for me, a 20-year-old university student, to believe that death is something far off. I remember in high school being reminded by teachers and family that “though you think it, you are not invincible.” How different our world might be if we stopped and reflected on the idea that each of us will die, if we would realize how much time we spend on things that, in the end, will not matter. As the Psalmist reminds us:
“As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more” (Ps. 103).
Walking past the Evergreen Cemetery each day offers a daily reminder to me that I am not evergreen. It offers a lesson that my mentors never could—that I am not invincible. This momento mori reminds me of the need to pray for the dead buried in the cemetery, and to live my life in such a manner that I will be found ready when the Son of Man comes at an hour I will not expect. As we approach All Souls’ Day and the month of November, let us all remember to pray for those who have died. Let us remember also, that we too, shall someday die. Though our life on earth is like grass,
“The steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
upon those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children’s children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments” (Ps. 103).
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