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Month of the Holy Souls (Day 25)

November 25, 2023

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Day 25

A reading from the first Letter of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians (4:13-18)

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,
     about those who have fallen asleep,
     so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose,
     so too will God, through Jesus,
     bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord,
     that we who are alive,
     who are left until the coming of the Lord,
     will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself, with a word of command,
     with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God,
     will come down from heaven,
     and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive, who are left,
     will be caught up together with them in the clouds
     to meet the Lord in the air.
Thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore, console one another with these words.

From the Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo

I heard later on that, during our stay in Ostia, she [Monica] had been talking in maternal confidence to some of my friends about her contempt of this life and the blessing of death. When they were amazed at the courage which was given her, a woman, and had asked her whether she did not dread having her body buried so far from her own city, she replied: “Nothing is far from God. I do not fear that, at the end of time, he should not know the place whence he is to resurrect me.” And so on the ninth day of her sickness, in the fifty-sixth year of her life and the thirty-third of mine, that religious and devout soul was set loose from the body.

I closed her eyes; and there flowed in a great sadness on my heart and it was passing into tears, when at the strong behest of my mind my eyes sucked back the fountain dry, and sorrow was in me like a convulsion. As soon as she breathed her last, the boy Adeodatus burst out wailing; but he was checked by us all, and became quiet. Likewise, my own childish feeling which was, through the youthful voice of my heart, seeking escape in tears, was held back and silenced. For we did not consider it fitting to celebrate that death with tearful wails and groanings. This is the way those who die unhappy or are altogether dead are usually mourned. But she neither died unhappy nor did she altogether die. For of this we were assured by the witness of her good life, her “faith unfeigned,” and other manifest evidence.

What was it, then, that hurt me so grievously in my heart except the newly made wound, caused from having the sweet and dear habit of living together with her suddenly broken? I was full of joy because of her testimony in her last illness, when she praised my dutiful attention and called me kind, and recalled with great affection of love that she had never heard any harsh or reproachful sound from my mouth against her. But yet, O my God who made us, how can that honor I paid her be compared with her service to me? I was then left destitute of a great comfort in her, and my soul was stricken; and that life was torn apart, as it were, which had been made but one out of hers and mine together.

And while those whose office it was to prepare for the funeral went about their task according to custom, I discoursed in another part of the house, with those who thought I should not be left alone, on what was appropriate to the occasion. By this balm of truth, I softened the anguish known to you. They were unconscious of it and listened intently and thought me free of any sense of sorrow. But in your ears, where none of them heard, I reproached myself for the mildness of my feelings, and restrained the flow of my grief which bowed a little to my will. The paroxysm returned again, and I knew what I repressed in my heart, even though it did not make me burst forth into tears or even change my countenance; and I was greatly annoyed that these human things had such power over me, which in the due order and destiny of our natural condition must of necessity happen. And so with a new sorrow I sorrowed for my sorrow and was wasted with a twofold sadness.

So, when the body was carried forth, we both went and returned without tears. For neither in those prayers which we poured forth to you, when the sacrifice of our redemption was offered up to you for her – with the body placed by the side of the grave as the custom is there, before it is lowered down into it – neither in those prayers did I weep. But I was most grievously sad in secret all the day, and with a troubled mind entreated you, as I could, to heal my sorrow; but you did not. I now believe that you were fixing in my memory, by this one lesson, the power of the bonds of all habit, even on a mind which now no longer feeds upon deception. It then occurred to me that it would be a good thing to go and bathe, for I had heard that the word for bath [balneum] took its name from the Greek [balaneion], because it washes anxiety from the mind. Now see, this also I confess to your mercy, “O Father of the fatherless”: I bathed and felt the same as I had done before. For the bitterness of my grief was not sweated from my heart.

Then I slept, and when I awoke I found my grief not a little assuaged. And as I lay there on my bed, those true verses of Ambrose came to my mind, for you are truly,

Deus, creator omnium,

Polique rector, vestiens

Diem decoro lumine,

Noctem sopora gratia;

Artus solutos ut quies

Reddat laboris usui

Mentesque fessas allevet,

Luctusque solvat anxios.

“O God, Creator of us all,

Guiding the orbs celestial,

Clothing the day with lovely light,

Appointing gracious sleep by night:

Your grace our wearied limbs restore

To strengthened labor, as before,

And ease the grief of tired minds

From that deep torment which it finds.”

And then, little by little, there came back to me my former memories of your handmaid: her devout life toward you, her holy tenderness and attentiveness toward us, which had suddenly been taken away from me – and it was a solace for me to weep in your sight, for her and for myself, about her and about myself. Thus I set free the tears which before I repressed, that they might flow at will, spreading them out as a pillow beneath my heart. And it rested on them, for your ears were near me – not those of a man, who would have made a scornful comment about my weeping. But now in writing I confess it to you, O Lord!

Read it who will, and comment how he will, and if he finds me to have sinned in weeping for my mother for part of an hour – that mother who was for a while dead to my eyes, who had for many years wept for me that I might live in your eyes – let him not laugh at me; but if he be a man of generous love, let him weep for my sins against you, the Father of all the brethren of your Christ.

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