August 24th is our wedding anniversary and has nothing to do with purgatory! It is also the feast of St. Barthlomew who according to legends was skinned alive and beheaded so he is often pictured holding the knife he was skinned with or holding his own skin. An Apostle and Martyr he must have died an agonising death. This saint's memory is venerated in the Catholic Church and Orthodox and Anglican Communities.
The extremely admirable convert priest, aplogist and writer, Monsignor Ronald Knox died on this day in 1957. In time to come I hope he will be made essential compulsory reading to seminarians. In the meantime I was very pleased to hear Mgr Knox's name mentioned in a beautifully crafted sermon on a sad occasion. The occasion was the requiem Mass for Fr. Hall's own wife, Liz (to whom reference is made in the sermon) who died a few weeks ago in lockdown. May she rest in peace.
I hope Liz is rejoicing in the bus ride and eventual promised destination. (See sermon)
The sermon is reproduced here in full:
Homily for
Requiem
What do you think will happen to you when you die? Not your body - you've probably watched
enough episodes of Silent Witness to be quite an expert on that. I mean your soul - your self?
You may be surprised to know that the New Testament does not
go into great detail about this. St John
tells us, "Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet
been revealed. What we do know is this: when Jesus Christ is revealed, we will
be like him, for we will see him as he is." When Jesus is revealed we shall be like him -
but does that mean when we die?
St Paul speaks to the Corinthians of a time of testing:
"Now people build on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones,
but also with wood, hay, and straw. The work of each builder will become
visible, for the Day of the Lord will disclose it, because the fire will test
what sort of work each has done. If what
has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will
suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire." The problem here is that he is talking about
the Church, not about us as individuals.
It's in this light that I'd like to talk to you about one of
Liz and my favourite books. I don't know
how many we've bought over the years to lend or give to people.
It's "The Great Divorce" by C S Lewis. The title is Lewis's response to the rather
strange poem by William Blake called "The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell". No marriage, says Lewis in
his foreword, but a Great Divorce.
The book takes the form of a dream, in which Lewis finds
himself in a dismal street, in a grey town, just as the light is failing on a
winter's afternoon. Suddenly, a resplendently
shining double-decker bus arrives, and he joins others climbing aboard. The bus takes him out of the town, in fact
out of the world, and to the outskirts of heaven.
They land in a pleasant flower-strewn meadow, and Lewis has a
series of surprises.
First, his fellow passengers, who had seemed so real on the
bus, now seem transparent, ghost-like, mere smudges on the air.
Secondly, the grass on which he is standing does not bend
under his weight - in fact its solidity hurts his feet.
Then, when he tries to pick a flower or a fallen leaf, he
finds them far too heavy to lift. It is
as if this new world is much more real than he is.
A further surprise comes when he notices that each visitor
from the bus has someone to meet them.
His own welcomer - guide, you might say - is a Scottish author whom Lewis had admired
throughout his life, whose writing, along with that of G K Chesterton, had
begun to turn him as a young man from
being an atheist into a believer in God.
You really need to read this short book yourself, but suffice
it to say that most of the rest of it is formed of two things: Lewis
questioning his guide about the world in which he is in, but also the
encounters between other passengers and their guides.
For each one of the visitors to the outskirts of heaven has
some thing that is chaining them to the grey town - some thing that is
preventing them from moving further into the heavenly land.
It is the guides' job to help the visitors receive freedom
and solidity. Some visitors need healing
from spiritual and emotional wounds.
Some need to repent of attitudes that still turn them in on themselves.
Some need to receive forgiveness from those they have wronged; others need to
forgive those who have wronged them.
Lewis watches as many, many of these visitors lose their
chains and move "further in and higher up". But with great sadness he also sees some who
are so turned inwards, so attached to their current state, that they refuse the
healing and freedom they are offered, and make their way back to the bus.
Liz and I, from our earliest days as Christians and even more
as we began to discover the treasures of the Catholic Church, were confident
that heaven would one day be our destination.
But moved by C S Lewis, and by reflecting on the misplaced
attachments in our own lives, we both realised that we would need a time of
healing, of penance, of purification before we were ready to come into the
awesome presence of God.
You will recognise, of course, that what C S Lewis is
describing in his book, what Liz and I both anticipated, is what the Church has
traditionally called purgatory. While
the Church has given, and still gives, teaching about this intermediary state,
answers to the question "but what is it like?" have been left to
poets like Dante and authors like Lewis.
Lewis, the Northern Irish Protestant, has been praised by Pope Benedict
and by at least one other major Catholic theologian for his fictional depiction
of the Last Things.
If that's the case, then what is happening to Liz now, in as
much as we can say "now" about the heavenly lands? Liz died strong in the faith and fortified by
the sacraments of the Church. But using
the language of the Great Divorce, she will be growing more solid as she faces
up to the things that hold her back, lays down her burdens, and receives
healing and forgiveness.
And that it why it is such an important work of mercy for us
to pray for Liz and all the departed.
Our prayers, our penance, even perhaps our forgiveness, can help in that
solidifying process.
Let me close by referring to another dream - one written down
by St John Henry Newman 20 years after his reception into the Catholic Church,
and later set to music by Edward Elgar.
In the Dream of Gerontius an old man approaches his death,
strong in faith and hope, and fortified by the prayers and sacraments of the Church.
Knowing that he will have to spend time in purgatory,
nevertheless it is his great wish that he might see the face of God first. Carried up to the highest heaven by his
guardian angel, he is granted that vision.
"Now he lies, " says
Newman, "Passive and still before the awful Throne. O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe,
Consumed, yet quicken'd, by the glance of God."
Gerontius himself then says,
"Take me away, and in the
lowest deep there let me be. There will
I sing, and soothe my stricken breast, that sooner I may rise, and go above,
and see him in the truth of everlasting day"
Newman's poem ends with words that describe exactly what we
are doing tonight. The Guardian Angel
says,
Angels shall tend, and nurse, and
lull thee as thou liest
And Masses on earth and prayers in heaven
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.
