But I must hasten to the answer of another question. Do they pray for us? Surely that question is as good as answered by what has just been said. If those who have gone from our sight are still permitted to know what it may be good for them to know of the trials and sorrows, the hopes and fears, the temptations and the warfare to which we, whom they loved so well and still love, are exposed on earth, we are sure that they take thought of us and pray for us. Shall not they whose eyes are opened,
now that they are with Christ, care for and pray for those whom they have left behind, tossing still upon the troubled seas, and buffeted by the vexing winds and storms of this earthly life?
They are, moreover, “with Christ.” What does this really imply,—to be “with Christ”? It must mean at least this, that, where Christ is, there is the Church. And Christ, though He has ascended to the Right Hand of God, is still in a true sense in Paradise also. For “He filleth all in all.” [100a] S. Stephen, before his death, prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Our Lord, therefore, must have been there in Paradise to receive it. S. Paul, long after our Lord’s Ascension, knew that to die was better than to live, because it was to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. [100b] But if Christ is there, He must be the object of the worship of those who are also there. So then if Christ be there, and the Church
is there, and worship is offered there, then it follows that the whole energy of Church life is there. The souls in Paradise are not so many isolated and individual units. The Church unites them. They are organised in the exercise of worship, sustained, as it surely is, in unfailing and perpetual intensity. As the incense of our worship rises here, it blends with the incense that ascends to Christ there. The Church is militant on earth, it is expectant in Paradise, it will be hereafter triumphant in Heaven. Yet these are not three Churches, but one Church. And this helps us to see more clearly what is meant by the Communion of Saints. The Church on earth and the Church in Paradise are one, and one thrill of spiritual communion vibrates through its members there and here.
But is prayer to be one sided? Communion is not one sided. And communion implies that what they do for us, we should also do for them. This brings us to one
more question. May we, then, pray for those who have passed on before us? Let us plainly say that there is every reason for and none against the practice. We have in favour of it the sanction of Bible witness, of primitive Church custom, of Christian and human instinct.
In the Jewish synagogues in our Lord’s time, prayers for the dead formed part of the service. [102] Our Lord therefore, Who regularly frequented the synagogue worship, must have been present at times when prayers for the dead were used. If He had disapproved of such prayers, He must have condemned the use of them. But did He? He did not. We have then His tacit sanction of them. S. Paul again, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, must have warned the Gentiles against the practice, unless he approved of it. But so far from that, there is every reason to suppose that he himself prayed for Onesiphorus. According to the best commentators, Onesiphorus
was dead when S. Paul wrote the words quoted in the text, “The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day,” viz., in the Day of Judgment. [103a] He does not pray for temporal blessings, for health, or even for grace. If it was too late to pray for these things, this omission is quite intelligible.
The earliest Church Liturgies contained in them prayers for the dead. [103b] And the earliest Christian writers, as well as the inscriptions on tombs bear such witness to the existence of this primitive practice, that it cannot be disputed. It is true that our English Prayer Book neither expressly sanctions nor yet expressly forbids these intercessions. But in the Liturgy, in the Litany, and in the Burial Service, prayers occur which appear to have been purposely so worded, as to lend themselves to a reference in the minds of worshippers to the faithful dead, if any should desire so to
apply them. Bishop Cosin, one of the chief compilers of our present Prayer Book, writes that the words, “that we and Thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of His Passion,” occurring in our Liturgy, are to be understood to refer as well to “those who have been here before,” that is to say, who have died in the Lord, as to those “that are now members of it,” that is, who still are living. [104]