We has mass for the dead in the parish last night, especially for those who died, including my father in the last year. They had a little alcove set aside for putting up mass cards for the dead and I got a real shock looking at the faces of how many I knew from childhood who had died without me knowing. 72 dead in all. I only knew many of them by their faces at mass and had rarely if ever talked to them. But there were a few , for me exceptionable ones, the death of the young I find moving, live is so precious. Gabriel, who had a drink problem and despite dire warnings for the doctors and repeated medical interventions, would just not stop drinking. He died alone in his appartment and was found three days later. Always smiling, every time we met he'd stop to talk.....his parents were behind me at mass and we shook hands, both of them, Pearl and Victor look suddenly old and shrunken and very,very sad... Frank with a young family who died at high speed in a motor cycle accident, his mother was there , his young wife and children. He was repeatedly warned about his high speeds......such a happy person, so full of life... Leo the shop keeper who I often talked to and went into for candy as a child. In the last few years he lived up at the fold. He got about on a Zimmer Frame and we talked often as he walked along so very, very slowly. I recall how his shop in the later years got robbed so often and he got beaten and had to retire, such a gentle , smiling man. At each name they lit a candle and they all burnt brightly and I thought, well...what if they're all standing here, the ones in purgatory and the ones in heaven smiling at us, part of the Parish Family again... There was a Holywood film I saw many, many years ago as a child...it was old even then. But it showed a cemetery in a rural town and each soul stood beside her/his grave looking down at the town below, waiting for judgement day. But, once a year each soul was allowed to leave its graveside and walk down to see the goinggs on with the folks below. As each left the graveside they of course went to their own families and returned with news to the waiting souls above. Such an idea does not, of course sit well with either Protestant nor Catholic ideas of the after death experience. I think our won Catholic belief in Purgatory, Hell and Heaven is so logical and just and fits in so well with sotries we hear for instance of the paranormal, of ghosts. For, if a soul after death goes straight to either heaven of hell how to we explain those who visit us, begging our help and prayers from the beyond? One Holly wood old movie I do recall well, though that reminds me so much of Purgatory. It concerned a mysterious cruise ship with a small group of travellers. Onyl with time do we realise that these folks are the recently dead ,all on their way to the Judgement seat of God and all to differing judgements. There is the gangster, who seems doomed to hell, but is saved through the prayers of his old and very holy Irish mother and is places once more in her care to learn to love. Their is the very rich , proud, selfish lady who is given a castle to live in with the finest luxuries, but she will be on her own their for ever. There is the steward who has commited suicide and because he has wasted his life in despair must stay serving on the cruise ship, serving the souls until judgement day...There is the Captain, the arcangel Michael who tells each reluctant soul the truth about themselves, the truths many of them have never faced, the implacable Judgement of the good God. I love November, darker nights and my thoughts turn to our dear dead and how to help them.
