Prayers For The Dead

Besides asking the prayers of the saints in heaven, Christians from the earliest centuries of the church have also expressed their communion with those who have died by praying for the dead. Inscriptions in the Roman catacombs indicate that the early Christians honoured and prayed for their deceased relatives and friends. Around 211 A.D, Tertullian wrote that Christians offered prayer and the eucharist for the deceased on the anniversaries of their death. St. Augustine wrote, "Neither are the souls of the pious dead separated from the church, which even now is the kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be remembrance of them at the altar of God in the communication of the body of Christ."

In praying for the dead, the early Christians were expressing their belief in the purification after death that we have called purgatory. After all, to pray for the dead only makes sense if they can benefit from those prayers. If the deceased had already arrived at their final eternal destiny -- heaven or hell -- prayer for them would be futile. If however, the deceased were undergoing the healing and purification of purgatory, then prayer for God's mercy on them would be reasonable and fitting.

The Second Vatican Council reaffirmed the belief of the early church that Christians ought to pray for those who are experiencing God's purification after death: "Very much aware of the bonds linking the whole mystical body of Jesus Christ, the pilgrim church from the very first ages of the Christian religion has cultivated with great piety the memory of the dead.

• Souls In Purgatory
• Purgatory
• Days Of The Dead
• All About The Feast of All Souls
• All Souls Day