Showing posts with label heaven. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heaven. Show all posts

2 Nov 2023

Commemoratio omnium fidelium defunctorum: A Post for All Souls' Day in Memory of My Mother

Traditionally, candles are used on All Souls' Day to provide 
light for the poor souls languishing in purgatorial darkness.
 
 
All Soul's Day is a day of prayer and remembrance for those who have departed this world but failed to make it straight into heaven; i.e., those poor souls who find themselves hanging about in that afterlife destination known as purgatory [1].
 
To be clear, these people are men and women of faith; they are not evil-doers who are ultimately bound for hell. Nevertheless, due perhaps to the taint of venial sin, or having failed to fully atone for past transgressions, they require some form of spiritual cleansing before they can ascend unto that place inhabited by angels and saints
 
The Church - and when I say the Church I mean the Catholic Church - teaches that this purification of souls in purgatory can be assisted by the actions of the living (thus the call to commemoration) and I like the idea that just as the dead can look on and help us, so too can we help them and, indeed, have a duty to be kind and generous to the departed. 
 
It's wrong for the dead to haunt the living and to resent their happiness; but it's also wrong of the living to curse the dead and deny them their entry into the highest place where they will know the gladness of death (which some believe to be oneness with God and others think of as oblivion). 
 
D. H. Lawrence was often respectful and tender towards the dead in his late poetry. He asks us, for example, to show pity towards the dead that were ousted out of life, but are not yet ready to make the final journey and so linger in the shadows like outcast dogs on the margins of heaven [2].            
 
In a very beautiful poem entitled 'All Souls Day', Lawrence writes:
 
 
Be kind, oh be kind to your dead
and give them a little encouragement
and help them to build their little ship of death.

For the soul has a long, long journey after death
to the sweet home of pure oblivion.
Each needs a little ship, a little ship
and the proper store of meal for the longest journey

Oh, from your heart
provide for your dead once more, equip them
like departing mariners, lovingly. [3]


Ultimately, it is our love and warm memories which purify the souls of the dead; the compassion of still-living hearts that helps them on "to the fathomless deeps ahead, far, far from the grey shores of marginal existence" [4].   
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Although many people confuse and conflate the terms, purgatory is not limbo and whilst the former is Church doctrine, the latter isn't - despite the fact that many Catholics believed in it and wrote about it, including Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. 
      Whilst purgatory is reserved for souls ultimately bound for heaven, limbo was believed to be the final destination for the souls of babies that had died without being baptised. In other words, a kind of posthumous neonatal unit either on the edge of hell or the lip of heaven. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI requested that Church theologians reconsider this idea and argued that the truly Christian thing to do was to pray that God's mercy be shown to all deceased babies.     
      As for purgatory, it's probably best to think of it as a state of being or condition of the soul, rather than a place. That way, one can avoid having to try and give coordinates as to its location. This seems to be the line that is presently taken by the Church.  
      Readers who are interested in this subject may like to see Diana Walsh Pasulka's book Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture, (Oxford University Press, 2014). 
 
[2] See Lawrence's poem 'The Houseless Dead' in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 635-36. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'All Souls Day', in The Poems, Vol. I, p. 635. 
      I read this poem in full at my mother's funeral service in February of this year: click here.
 
[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'After All Saints Day', in The Poems, Vol. I, p. 637. 

 
This post is also in memory of Felisa Martinez and Angeliki Thanassa.   


2 Oct 2016

Of Virgins and Raisins



According to Christoph Luxenberg's controversial reading of the Koran, one of the better known inducements offered to young Muslim males prepared to martyr themselves is not, in fact, a heavenly harem of virgins, but, rather, a fistful of raisins. 

However, without wishing to doubt for one moment Luxenberg's scholarly credentials or the painstaking nature of his research, I have to say I'm not entirely convinced by his argument that the Aramaic word hur, meaning white raisins - a great delicacy in the ancient world - was mistranslated into the Arabic term for a fair maiden (and subsequently transliterated into Latin as houris). It just seems a revision too far; that is to say, too good - because so splendidly amusing - to be true.

One fears that Luxenberg has some kind of anti-Islamic agenda in wishing to strip Jannah of its sexual promise. Accused by some of being a Christian apologist, perhaps he can't stand the thought that whilst all that he's offered in the afterlife is, at best, a family reunion, a bit of a sing-song, and the chance to hang about with Jesus, Muslim martyrs hit the jackpot.

Delights on offer include: rivers of wine, milk and honey, young boys of perpetual freshness to attend to one's every need, fine silk garments, and, as mentioned, 72 virgins. And when Allah provides virgins, they're not just any old virgins - they're übervirgins, the purest of all pure beings with lovely gazelle-shaped eyes, naturally large breasts, hairless, translucent bodies and inviting vaginas; immortals who have no need to urinate, defecate, or menstruate.

Despite Luxenberg's etymological argument, it's difficult to assign a raisin - no matter how plump and delicious it might be - such physical attributes. The fact is, the Islamic paradise is a far more sensual and priapic place than the sexless Christian heaven, which is free of pain and tears, but also lacking in erotic joy.

Some might caricature the former as nothing more than a celestial brothel, but that's a slightly more appealing prospect if I'm honest than a great care home in the sky.            


See: Christoph Luxenburg, Die Syro-Aramäische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Koransprache (Verlag Hans Schiller, 2000)