Third Anniversary

Prayer was, is, everything for him.

I was reading an article today in New Oxford Review (a Catholic magazine) about the Post-Vatican II funeral services at which it is not only assumed, but pronounced, that the deceased was immediately transported to Heaven. Naturally, the article took issue with this modernistic, and secular-ly informed, assertion. In the understanding of the philosophical and theological world preceding us by thousands of years today seen by the modern gnostic as quaint--maybe Heaven is not the final destination, or if it is, that happy condition is preceded by the purification of Purgatory. In a world of relativism, where good is variously defined and bad is banished from consideration, we all receive a celestial reward, (if you believe in such things at all) much as on earth the losing team members get a trophy too. We Catholics have been sold for our psyche's sake on the latter outcome. Sin, what sin? 

The article put me in mind of my former pastor, spiritual mentor and friend, Fr. Parnassus, who died, just about three years ago. Like the rest of us, the clerically consecrated, the religious layperson-even, dare I say, the enlightened humanist of New Age or no faiths, he frequently did not successfully practice what he preached. Those of us who knew Monsignor fairly well, and perhaps particularly, those of us who shared some of the same faults, recognized in his stunning homilies references to his pride, impatience and insensitivity toward our fellow man to be battled not only with resolution but with the Grace of the Sacrament of Confession (today called Reconciliation) sought frequently. He often reminded himself and his parishioners that the Devil, that fallen angel, both dismissed and embraced (after all, do we not have a TV show out there called, "Lucifer", hero of the day?) by our society, was sitting right next to us, speaking words of deception to us. He was what we were, a sinner, and he remonstrated with us, both publicly and privately, to remember that he was surely going to have to endure Purgatory. We must pray for him when his time came. He seemed even to fear that in that confusion of this century, even practicing Catholics would fail to do it, assuming transmission directly to the beatific vision for all souls.

The markers in the priest section of Holy Cross Cemetery in Los Angeles are uniform. They include the name of the priest, date of ordination, date of birth and death, as was pointed out by the Holy Cross administration at the time of his burial. But Monsignor had made his instructions known very clearly and so, his marker includes the plea, "Please pray for him". It is a plea that he insisted upon for all we love, when they die. 

And so, we pray for them. For him. We will make a formal remembrance of the third anniversary of his death on August 14, 2016 at the 12:15 Mass, then again, at the 8 a.m. Mass on the 20th, with a road trip for the rosary at his grave site thereafter. And perhaps he will intercede for us, still burdened by the Cloud of Unknowing, and ask the Lord to help keep us faithful when it is ever so hard to be.