Annotation XLVII
”The girl is not dead, but sleeps.” — Matthew 9:24
Whether the suffrages made for the departed profit both the blessed and the damned.
Chrysostom, in homily 33 on Matthew — when, narrating this passage, he treated of the care to be taken for the dead — fell in a certain way into the opinion of those who think that the suffrages and prayers which are here performed in the church profit both those who are damned in hell and those who enjoy eternal glory. For there he relates such things: “For if many barbarous nations are wont to burn the goods of the dead together with the dead, how much more fitting is it that you, [when your] son is dead, can hand over his own [goods] — not that they be reduced to ashes, but that they may render him more glorious. Do you think he departed stained with spots? Give his own [goods for him], that he may wipe himself clean of those spots. Do you think he died in righteousness? Offer your [goods] for him, for an increase of [his] reward and recompense.” And in the liturgy of the divine sacrifice published by him — and approved by the same [author] in various homilies — he composed a formula of praying and offering for all the faithful departed, and especially for the souls of the blessed, in these words: “We offer to thee this rational worship for those resting in the faith — the fathers, patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, the heralds and evangelists, martyrs, confessors, and every soul initiated in the faith.”
Nor does Gregory, the Roman pontiff, seem far from this opinion, in the book of the Sacraments [Sacramentary], where, in the sacred mysteries of the Mass, he appointed [us] to pray in these words: “We have received, O Lord, the divine mysteries; [grant that,] as they profit thy saints unto glory, so, we beseech, they may avail us unto healing.”
Again, [as to the point] that prayers and oblations [profit] some- [that prayers and oblations profit some]thing of refreshment to those who have departed without penance — the same Chrysostom seems to indicate, in the third homily on the Epistle to the Philippians, where he addresses those who mourn the dead beyond [what is] fitting, thus: “Bewail those who have died in [their] riches and procured no consolation for their own souls out of their riches — who, when they had received the power of washing away their sins, would not. Let us weep for these, but with the modesty of decorum. Let us weep for these, let us help them with [our] strength, let us procure for them some aid — little indeed; yet let us help them. How, and by what means? By praying, let us exhort others too to pray for them; and let us unceasingly give alms to the poor for them. This thing has no little consolation. For not in vain was it ordained by the Apostles that, in the celebration of the venerable mysteries, memory should be made of those who have departed hence. They know that much profit accrues to them from this, much benefit. But this indeed we say of those who have departed in the faith; but the catechumens are not reckoned worthy even of this consolation, but are destitute of all such aid, except one only. And what is that? It is permitted to give to the poor in their name, whence some little refreshment accrues to them.”
John Damascene, in the sermon On Aiding the Dead, confirms these words of Chrysostom, adducing several examples which openly show that the suffrages of the faithful profit, in some part, even the unbelieving and impious [who are] damned to eternal punishment. And first he brings forward Falconilla, a woman who, as long as she lived, was a worshiper of idols and alien to the religion of Christ — whom Thecla the protomartyr, while still living among us, rescued from the underworld by her prayer. He likewise brings forward, from the sacred history of Palladius [dedicated] to Lausus, Macarius the Great, praying assiduously for the dead: to whom, anxiously inquiring whether his prayers profited the departed, a certain dry skull of an idolater which happened to lie in the road, bursting forth into speech at the divine command, said: “When, O Macarius, you offer prayers for the dead, we meanwhile feel some [degree of] relief.” He adds also, among other examples, the deed of Gregory, the Roman pontiff, who, when he earnestly prayed to God for the salvation of Trajan Augustus (who had died nearly five hundred years before his time), heard a voice divinely brought, saying: “I have heard your prayers, and I give pardon to Trajan; but do not you henceforth offer me a sacrifice for an impious [man].” From this opinion Augustine seems not to have altogether shrunk — especially in the Enchiridion to Laurentius, chapter 110, where he set down these things: “When the sacrifices, whether of the altar or of any alms whatsoever, are offered for all the baptized dead, for the very good they are thanksgivings; for the not-very-bad they are propitiations; for the very bad, even if they are no aids to the dead, they are some kind of consolations to the living. And those to whom they profit, [profit] either to this — that there be full remission — or at least that the damnation itself become more tolerable.” And below, permitting the mitigation of the damnation to be believed, he says: “I judge the punishments of the damned, at certain intervals of time,
if it please [i.e. if it be found acceptable to hold this], to be somewhat mitigated — provided it be understood that the wrath of God (that is, the damnation itself) remains in them: in which [damnation] God, his wrath remaining, does not nevertheless withhold his compassions; not by ending the eternal punishments, but by applying [some] relief, or interposing [it amid] the torments.” This [says] Augustine.
But also Aurelius Prudentius, in the hymn On the New Light of the Paschal Sabbath, relates that the lost souls of the guilty rest from torments on the Paschal vigil — which of old all Christians were wont to bring about [for them] by prayers and sacrifices. And he sings in this manner:
“There are also, for the harmful spirits, oft-recurring holidays of their punishments, famous under the Styx, on that night when the sacred God returned to the upper world from the Acherontic pools. Tartarus grows slack with milder punishments, and exults in the leisure of its prison. The people of the shades [are] free from the fires, and the rivers seethe not with their wonted sulphur.”
In these, and in other such sayings of illustrious fathers, the scholastic theologians have variously interpreted [them], especially in those [passages] which speak of alleviating the punishments of the damned. For just as they did not dare to condemn the opinion of the saints, so neither did they think it safe to embrace it — lest by that assertion they should gradually be driven into Origen’s error, [namely] that the punishments of hell will someday be ended. For they foresaw that those torments, by the multiplication of the prayers and alms of the pious, could be so far mitigated and diminished that at length they would sometime cease to be torments. Therefore, lest they be dashed against this rock, they searched out various paths of escape.
Prepositinus [of Cremona], a priest of the church of Liège, wrote in the compendium of his theology that so great a multitude of suffrages could be heaped upon the damned that, in the progress of time, they would be stripped of all punishments — yet not forever (as Origen had thought), but until the resurrection, in which — their bodies being resumed — they would again be thrust into eternal punishments, every hope of refreshment and solace being utterly cast off.
Gilbert [of Poitiers], bishop of Poitiers, in the book of Theological Questions, thought that by the prayers and oblations of the faithful the punishments of the reprobate are taken away — without their consumption [i.e. without ending them] — in that manner in which infinite proportional parts are wont to be taken away from a line: from which, although it be not itself infinite, yet infinite parts can be subtracted without any consuming of it.
William [of Auxerre], bishop of Auxerre, at the end of [his] Summa Theologica, judges that the aids of the living give suffrage to the damned, not toward the diminution or interruption of the torment, but toward the comforting and strengthening of the sufferer: as if someone should refresh with food a man weighed down by a huge burden, or drench [him] with cold water — he will indeed render him stronger for bearing the load, yet will not diminish the load even a tiny bit.
Rupert [i.e. the bishop of Lincoln — Robert Grosseteste], not far from the end of [his] Theological Summa, handed down that the punishments of the damned are neither taken away, nor interrupted, nor diminished, yet some occasion of a graver misery is withdrawn from them, while they perceive that by these — who extend suffrages [to them] — they are not utterly cast off, but find among the living some commiseration for their present evils.
St. Thomas, on the fourth [book] of the Sentences, distinction 45, question 2 — the opinions of these [scholars] being refuted — decrees that our suffrages profit neither the blessed nor the damned in anything: the former, because — abounding in all abundance of goods — our aids can confer nothing on them; the latter, because — sunk in the utmost depth of all evils — no effect of redemption, however slight, may be hoped for [them]. But as for those things which chiefly Chrysostom and Gregory advise concerning prayers pertaining to the blessed, he says that the sayings of both are not to be so understood as that we should think the glory of the blessed, in the blessed themselves, is increased and receives an accession from our prayers and oblations; but that we should believe their glory grows in us who pray and offer, and brings to us many and great increases of virtues for attaining that same glory of theirs. Just as when we praise God, we acquire by these praises no increase of glory for his divinity; but the glory of his majesty is rendered more and more conspicuous in us.
But to those things brought forward from Chrysostom and other fathers in the case of the damned: St. Thomas, in the first place, notes that the name “damnation” is extended also to the punishments of purgatory; and that, according to this signification, Augustine said that the damnation of some — namely, of those existing in purgatory — is made more tolerable by the aids of the faithful.
In the second place he observes that that kind of consolation and refreshment, which is sometimes related to have reached the souls of the damned from the prayers of the saints, brought them no diminution of torment, but a certain empty appearance of a deceptive joy, and a pleasing illusion of the mourning mind — such as they say is [found] in the demons, who, when they have drawn men into sinning, are so affected by a certain false and imaginary gladness that nothing of their punishments is [thereby] decreased.
Lastly, to that which Damascene relates — that the souls of Falconilla and Trajan were aided by the prayers of Thecla and Gregory — he answers that helps of this kind were special dispensations, granted to each by a singular privilege; and that those things conceded to some, outside the common law, by [special] grace, are not to be drawn into a precedent for the rest.
Consult what we have touched upon below, at Annotation 311, concerning catechumens who have died — on the opinion of Chrysostom, drawn in here from the Epistle to the Philippians.