Friends Beyond Death

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

February 4, 2015

Friends beyond Death

“May the God of all love,

who is the source of our affection

for each other formed here,

take our friendships into his keeping,

that they may continue and increase

throughout life and beyond it,

in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.”

(Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple, 1881-1944)

Sometimes people brought up in faithless homes, or even thoroughgoing protestant households, wonder why we Episcopalians pray for our family and friends who have died. 

The Prayer Book (p. 862) teaches in our Catechism: “We pray for the dead because we still hold them in our love, and because we trust that in God’s presence those who have chosen to serve him will grow in his love, until they see him as he is.” 

C. S. Lewis summarizes the personal reason most of us pray for the dead this way:  “Of course I pray for the dead.  The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me.  And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden… At our age the majority of those we love best are dead.  What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best is unmentionable to Him?”  (Prayer: Letters to Malcolm, p. 109.) 

As we lose those we love to the Grim Reaper, it is important to remember that they are not lost.  We love them still, though we no longer can see them.  But the veil separating us and the unseen world is very thin, and at times translucent.  The light gets in through the thin places and in the cracks. 

And so we pray, and so we hope.

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+