TRANSCRIPT

With the recent deaths of both Billy Graham and Barbara Bush, it's worth noting that the memorials and celebrations and hoopla surrounding their lives occasioned by their deaths will have accounted for nothing when they stood before their Judge in eternity. They were recipients of huge accolades in death merely because they were born into or achieved notoriety in life but that notoriety means nothing to God. They are already mingled into the billions of souls who are either long dead and forgotten or shortly will be.

In the midst of all the public secular mourning over the dead, such inane statement are made as "You will live forever in our hearts." Uh, no know they won't, first of all, because the people making the statements will one day be dead themselves and won't be "remembering" anyone. Second of all, they live now in the mercy or justice of God, not in people's memories. A memory has no life of its own. It is entirely invested in by the person with the memory, if they have a memory of the dearly departed at all.

This is not how Catholics respond to death, presenting a false notion which passes away in a few weeks, months or years with the person never to be thought of again. And that will be the lot of everyone one of us — every single one of us. There will come the time when the earth will be full of people who will never know you or I were alive — that we ever walked on the same dirt they are walking on, just as we are now walking around, completely unaware of who was living on our street 50 years ago or certainly 100 years ago. Do you have any conscious thoughts of the 15th century Aztec husband and father who led a normal life and died, say, 50 years later? Nope, you don't even know he was ever alive. That's what people will think, or more to the point, not think of us in 50 or 100 or 500 years. They will not know, not even care, that we once roamed the earth. We will be dead and forgotten unless you are Catholic. That is a pretty bleak depressing scenario.

Think for example of the overdose death of Hollywood actor Heath Ledger who died on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, January 22. How many people could even say the year he died on that date? Yet, there was the typical outpouring and mourning and beating of breast and endless reporting of the circumstances of his death, funeral and burial, legacy and so forth. That was 10 years ago, 2008, yet for all that endless coverage, how many of us have given the man a single passing thought after all the TV cameras and commentators stopped covering him? And remember, this was someone who had achieved some degree of notoriety in this world, and even with that, he is hardly given a thought or mention anymore. Soon, his own family and friends will also die, and that will be that.

Yet for Catholics, faithful Catholics, when they die, they are remembered — not the way the world remembers and then quickly moves on but in the most important way possible — in the continuing prayers of Holy Mother Church. See, Heath and Billy and Barbara are living right now, but they enjoy none of the notoriety they had in this life, nor do they benefit from it — all the songs and anthems and speeches of praise they are completely unaware of. They have no idea they are even being mentioned unless it is prayers for assistance for the remission of their sins.

Every time we hear of someone famous dying or someone not famous for that fact, folks here at the apostolate immediately say an Eternal Rest for the person and then many of us include that person by way of a virtual intention in every prayer we ever make for the rest of our lives. That's how Catholics remember the dead. We know the dead need not praise but prayers. And we are thankful to Our Blessed Lord who is outside of time for establishing a Church whose prayers transcend the boundaries of time, so that when we are dead and forgotten in the temporal order, we will be forever remembered in the eternal order — the only one that counts.

A usual prayer around the apostolate, which if you pray Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer with us each weekday on our live stream will recognize, includes the line "May the souls of all the faithful departed, especially those who have no one to pray for them, through your sweet mercy, Jesus, rest in peace." We know that the vast majority of the dead, the huge majority, have been completely forgotten to those of us on earth. We also know that this will be our lot as well, all of us, and we will need the prayers of as many who will unite themselves to the prayers of Holy Mother Church. A person who has died will either be alive in Christ through His Church or dead and forgotten to the world and suffering the fires of Hell.