Remembering the saints and the dead!

Today is All Saint's Day and tomorrow is All Soul's Day, celebrations that happen only in a handful of Catholic or Christian countries, although most of them celebrate differently. In the US, they call it "Memorial Day". But they do not celebrate it the way we do, where the nation completely stops or drops everything and the people go home to the provinces to remember their loved ones who have gone to the great beyond! I'm sure that many Filipinos have been having a grand time since Saturday, as our All Saint's Day celebrations have also become a five-day vacation. Unfortunately for journalists, we cannot have such a luxury, as no one will write our columns while we're away.

I just hope that our way of commemorating the day of the dead would not mean desecrating them, especially when we know how people turn our cemeteries into fiesta or mahjong dens! All Saint's Day should remind all of us that once upon a time, certain people lived exemplary lives and the Catholic Church honored them with sainthood so their lives can be a good example for all of us to emulate. But some people who become "Christ-like" already live the lives of saints even in this life. One was Mother Theresa who was called the "Living Saint."

When we talk of Saints, you'll encounter some evangelicals asking you, "Why do we pray to dead Saints or to dead people?" They usually follow such question as, where is it in the Bible that we should pray to dead Saints? To answer this query, allow me to quote from one of my prayer books entitled, "Our Daily Prayer" a Catholic Prayer Book by Dermot Hurley of the Society of St. Columban, Fiji.

"Why do we pray to Saints? Our prayers to the Saints are therefore really acts of love and praise and petition to God, in whom they live, through whom they hear us, and without whom they could not hear us. We pray to them not because they can help us more than God can, nor because they want to help us more than God does, but because they are men and women like ourselves who lived human lives in this world, people whom perhaps we have learned to know well either in person, or from the words or writings of others.

And so, we sometimes find it easier and more natural and more human to go to God 'through them', than go to God directly. We are easily drawn to friendship, love and trust towards people whose love and goodness we personally experienced in the past, or people who faced and overcame difficulties and temptations like ours-people who like us, sinned and were forgiven, people whose lives remind us that we, like them, are called to the destiny of sharing God's life when we leave this world in his friendship."

I do not expect all our readers to accept or even understand this, but if you're a Catholic, it is clearly in our creed that we believe in the "Communion of Saints". If you do not believe in this, then don't say you're a Catholic!

Perhaps the most important Biblical passage to learn by heart comes from John 11: 25-26 which goes, "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection, and the life; he who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.'" Another passage worth memorizing also comes from John 12: 25, "He that loves his life shall lose it, and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal."

So there is no argument that only our flesh dies, but our spirit continues to live in life eternal; the problem is where are the dead in the spirit world… in heaven or in hell? Whenever I'm in the cemetery and I see those exquisite mansions built by the rich for their dead, the question always pops up in my mind: Where is the soul of their dead? They encase their corpses in luxurious and opulent mansions, but their souls could be burning in eternal damnation. Indeed, I'd rather see a simple grave for as long as I know in my heart that the soul of the person in that grave is in heaven.

Finally, allow me to quote in Matthew 23: 25-28: "What miserable frauds you are, you scribes and Pharisees! You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, while the inside is full of greed and self-indulgence. Alas for you, you hypocritical scribes and Pharisees! You are like white-washed tombs, which look fine on the outside but inside are full of dead men's bones and all kinds of rottenness. For you appear like good men on the outside 'but inside you are a mass of pretence and wickedness.'"

I submit that reading this passage was the very reason why whenever I see a grave of a friend, I always ask the question, where is the soul of this person? But in this passage, our Lord Jesus Christ is not referring to the dead, rather he is talking about hypocritical people who think live very clean lives, but in reality, that is only what you see in the outside.

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