Mystic sweet communion

Well, I did not make it to All Souls. I had to work at my office in Bellingham that day, which meant a half-hour drive home, 5:00-5:30, and the service started at 6:00, so I would have been home for 15 minutes and left again. Days with a commute are also more tiring. I decided already around 3:00 in the afternoon that when I got home I would stay home. All Souls is not a Holy Day of Obligation.

A few days later, I was mindful that it was the 16th anniversary of my oldest brother's death. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen. Praying for and being in fellowship with my loved ones who have died was one of the things that attracted me to Catholicism.

A Catholic Facebook friend had this quote by Pope Benedict XVI on her page:

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.

When my brother died, and later my parents, I missed them and I also still wanted to show my love for them. Catholic practice provides more room for me to be aware of my fellowship with them and to give love that they can receive.

Prior to being received into full communion with the Catholic Church, I felt this, but my own tradition did not address it. Catholics, in addition to praying for those who have gone ahead, also ask them to pray for us. While I was reading a Chaim Potok novel, I read a scene when a woman was talking to her dead brother and said, "Be an intercessor for me." I thought, if Jewish people do this, then I have more confidence in it, since Judaism was the faith that Jesus practiced. It indicated to me that the practice existed even prior to the Incarnation and was not a new invention by the church at some point in its history.

I always loved the verse in the hymn "The Church's One Foundation" that says:

Yet she on earth hath union

With God the Three in One,

And mystic sweet communion

With those whose rest is won.

"Mystic sweet communion" — I love it.

Hallows

I'm glad to say that I made it to church this evening for the service for All Saints. It was bilingual, English and Spanish. On Sundays, we have separate English and Spanish services. I suppose if not for Vatican II we could all be together in Latin. But I won't go there.