RBWords - Volume 24 - Number 10: October 2011
Something to Think About
As I write this, I am in New Orleans, LA, at a historic church on Rampart Street on the edge of the French Quarter and across the street (Basin St.) behind the church is one of the famous “cities of the dead” which are the New Orleans cemeteries. St. Louis Cemetery #1 is the oldest, I think, of the existing cemeteries. The graves are all above ground because of the high water table. Some of the mausoleums have hundreds of individual remains in them. Some have only one. At least one has been built in advance and is shaped like a pyramid. I was told it belongs to a celebrity actor/director. Tomorrow the place will look like a flower shop since All Saints Day is a traditional day to decorate graves in New Orleans (and elsewhere in Catholic Louisiana). This contrasts with my experience in San Antonio where All Souls Day (El Dia de los Muertos) is the big day to decorate.
Today and tonight Halloween will be celebrated in a vivid way in the French Quarter. There are walking tours of “haunted houses” and costumes that begin with outrageous and go further! I’ll be back in Houston in a more sedate environment before all that begins! But the whole celebration of Halloween, All Saints and All Souls has given me something to think about.
2 Maccabees 12:45 has the classic passage, “It is a good and holy thing to pray for the dead.” When I visit my hometown of Natchitoches, LA, I make a point of visiting the cemeteries where my parents and my sister are buried to say a prayer for them. We Dominicans pray Psalm 130 (the “De Profundis”) each day for our deceased brethren.
All of this celebration reminds me that it is not just those who have died that are included, but all of us who are related to them in memory. This is the communion of saints that we profess in the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds. We are linked in memory and in baptism which is our call to holiness of life. To visit a cemetery and to pray for the dead is not simply to remind ourselves that one day we will die, but also to remind ourselves that we and those buried are alive for God. IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!
It Has Been Said
“A living subject necessarily puts something of himself into what he receives. When he receives a teaching, whether it is by word of mouth, by example or even from a written book, it always assumes a certain quality of dialogue. Words, even when written, of their very nature include something that arouses a response in the person addressed. A message, and this is particularly true of the apostolic message, is destined for someone SO THAT he may live by it.”
From THE MEANING OF TRADITION by Yves Congar, O.P.