“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
The Assumption of Mary and the Assent of Saint Maximilian Kolbe
In one of history’s darkest times and places, Saint Maximilian Kolbe continued his life’s greatest quest: to know, honor, and echo the assent of Mary to the Lord.
In one of history’s darkest times and places, Saint Maximilian Kolbe continued his life’s greatest quest: to know, honor, and echo the assent of Mary to the Lord.
August 14, 2024 by Fr. Gordon MacRae
On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII solemnly defined as a dogma of faith the bodily Assumption into Heaven of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The precise words of Pope Pius are found in the Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus, “The Most Bountiful God,” defining what much of the Church already believed, and now holds as a matter of truth:
“We pronounce, declare and define it to be a divinely revealed truth that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”
It was not without controversy. Pius XII thus became the first pope in a century to define a new dogma of faith. Five papacies earlier, in 1869, Pope Pius IX sought, cajoled, and in the end imposed, the doctrine of papal infallibility. In his book, Making Saints, former Newsweek editor Kenneth Woodward described the doctrine of infallibility as a “sheathed sword” (Making Saints, p. 314). He described it that way because, from the time of the doctrine’s inception in 1869, a declaration of papal infallibility has only been invoked once: a century later in 1950 when Pius XII declared the Assumption of Mary to be an infallible tenet of faith.
This was not just a unilateral pronouncement from on high. Before defining the dogma in 1950, Pius XII sought and received an amazing response of affirmation from the “sensus fidelium,” the assent of the faithful from throughout the world. The Our Sunday Visitor Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine describes this beautifully:
“Infallibility in belief pertains to the whole Church. ‘The whole body of the faithful … cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of the faith (the ‘sensus fidei’) of the whole people when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent to matters of faith and morals.” (Lumen Gentium)
“To understand properly how the whole people of God is infallible in its sense of the faith (sensus fidei, sensus fidelium) it must be born in mind that the body of the faithful goes beyond limits both of place and, especially, of time. The People of God always includes those of past generations as well as those in the present moment. The former are in fact the vast majority, and it is easier to ascertain what they believed. It is that belief that marks the sensus fidelium and points infallibly to the truth." (p. 334)
To help in understanding this concept of the Universal Church that includes the faith of all generations past, see my post, “The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead” (linked again at the end of
this post). It is evidence of the ongoing connectedness of the faithful departed to the life of the Church.
I found this concept to be a stunning affirmation, not only of what we believe, but of why we believe it. The idea that infallibility includes the unwavering faith of the vast majority of the People of God taken as a whole over the span of millennia is mind-boggling truth.
The faith of the entire Church, from its birth at Pentecost to the present, points to a belief in Mary as Theotokos, the Bearer of God and the New Ark of the Covenant. Pope Pius XII strongly considered this before defining as infallible the Dogma of the Assumption in 1950. From the Chair of Peter, Pius XII sought the assent of the faithful in the present through his encyclical, Deiperae Virginis Mariae, to inquire whether Mary’s bodily Assumption should be defined.
As a result, an amazing number of petitions reached Rome from every corner of the Church. The petitions included those of 8,000,000 laity, 50,000 religious women, 32,000 priests, 2,505 archbishops and bishops, 311 cardinals, and 81 patriarchs of the Eastern Church. If this demonstration of assent had been able to span the entire life of the Church the result would have been immeasurable.
From the earliest days of the Church many considered the Assumption of Mary — centuries before it was defined as a tenet of faith — to be, in the words of Pius XII, “the fulfillment of that most perfect grace granted to the Blessed Virgin and the special blessing that countered the curse of Eve” — original sin. In the Eastern Church, a “Memorial of Mary” was already being celebrated on August 15 in the Fifth Century. It spread from the East and came ot be known as the koimesis in Greek and the dormitio in Latin, both of which mean the “falling asleep.” By the Eighth Century, belief in the bodily Assumption of Mary was widely accepted in both the East and West.
In the 19th Century, John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote that both the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary are implicit in her identification as the “New Eve,” a title given to Mary since the Second Century. Just as the Resurrection of Jesus was the essential element of His victory over sin and death, Mary shares that victory in her designation as the New Eve, and in the words of Jesus at the foot of the Cross as the spiritual Mother of all. Seeing His Mother at the foot of the Cross, Jesus said ot her, “Woman, behold your son.” And then to the Disciple John, “Behold your Mother.” It was an adoption arrangement (John 19:26-27).
Among the earliest titles of Mary is Theotokos, Greek for “The Bearer of God.” For the Scriptural foundation of this belief and its implications, see my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
“What Will Become of You?”
In the Gospel account of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:2), Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus at Mount Tabor. Both Moses and Elijah, according to Scripture, entered heaven in both body and soul. The appearances of Mary at Fatima, Lourdes, Tepeyac Hill in Mexico, and others all point to an understanding of Mary as existing still in that same form. I wrote of the details of one of these visits in “A Subtle Encore from Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
There is no saint of modern times with a stronger and more dedicated devotion ot Mary than Saint Maximilian Kolbe who seemed to live with a perpetual presence of the Immaculata in his field of view. Long before he was the Saint of Auschwitz and Founder of the Militia Immaculata, Saint Maximilian Kolbe was simply “Raymond,” a highly intelligent and gifted boy born into poverty in a rural farming community in Poland.
Like me, Raymond Kolbe was fascinated by the sciences of astronomy and cosmology and actually once built a working rocket as a boy. Also like me, he exasperated his mother at times. One day his frustrated mother scolded him, “Raymond! Whatever will become of you?” Filled with grief, young Kolbe went immediately to a local church and turned to the Mother of God with the same question. According to Kolbe’s own words as reported by my friend, Father Michael Gaitley, MIC in his wonderful book, 33 Days to Morning Glory,
“Then the virgin appeared to me holding in her hands two crowns, one white and one red. She looked at me with love and she asked me if I would like to have them. The white meant that I would remain pure, and the red meant that I would be a martyr. I answered, ‘yes, I want them.’ Then she looked at me tenderly and disappeared.”
Father Gaitley went on to describe that what was meant by “pure” in this sense was that Kolbe would never allow evil or dishonesty to take root in his heart. And it never did. On August 14, the date this is posted, the Church honors Saint Maximilian Kolbe. He also happens to be my own Patron Saint as well as that of my friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri, and the Patron Saint of this blog. To the best of our ability, we follow in his spiritual footsteps, but his footsteps took him to an ultimate sacrifice. The nature of that sacrifice, along with Maximilian’s Auschwitz prison number 16670, now a badge of honor, is expressed on Pornchai’s T-shirt atop this section of our post. Our friend, Father Michael Gaitley, MIC, described the footsteps of Saint Maximilian in brief but familiar prose in 33 Days to Morning Glory :
“In 1941, after decades of incredibly fruitful apostolic labors in Poland and Japan, Kolbe was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Before his arrest, his brother Franciscans had pleaded with him to go into hiding. He said he was grateful for their loving hearts but couldn’t follow their advice.
“He later explained why: ‘I have a mission to fulfill.’ That mission was fulfilled on the eve of the Feast of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven when, after he volunteered to take the place of another prisoner condemned to starvation, the impatient Nazis finished Kolbe off with a lethal injection. Thus, St. Maximilian died a martyr of charity and received the red crown from his Immaculata.”
Two hours before his arrest, Fr. Maximilian Kolbe penned what Father Gaitley called “the single most important theological reflection of his life. It was nothing less than the answer to a question that eluded him for many years, the question he had pondered over and over throughout his life was: “Who are you, O Immaculate Conception?”
In the document, according to Father Gaitley, Kolbe raised a key point. In the appearances of Mary at Lourdes, Mary did not say to St. Bernadette, “I am immaculately conceived,” but rather she said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” It was thus clarified for Maximilian that through a special grace from God, Mary was in fact immaculately conceived in the womb of her own mother with no stain of original sin and that grace became her very identity by the as yet unseen merits of her Son. Understanding this means stepping out of conventional time and space for a moment into the mystery of the “nunc stans” the "Eternal Now" in which God dwells and in which He envisions all time and space as one. It is a difficult concept for our linear existence to ponder, but I have pondered it for my entire life.
Father Gaitley asks (p. 52): “Why does Mary make the grace she received at her conception her very name?” Clearly, Mary is not a divine being. Kolbe wrestled with this divinity problem for decades, and it ultimately led to a solution.
There are two Immaculate Conceptions, one created (Mary) and the other uncreated (the Holy Spirit). Before Mary, there was the uncreated Immaculate Conception, “the One Who for all eternity springs from God the Father and God the Son as an uncreated conception of love, the prototype of all conceptions that multiply life throughout the universe. The Father begets, the Son is begotten, the Spirit is the 'conception' that springs from their love. The Holy Spirit is the “Immaculate Conception” b e c a u s e, being God, He is without sin.
Is Mary then a personification of the Holy Spirit? The truth of this union between the Holy Spirit and Mary is found in a somewhat difficult passage in Maximilian’s own writings as reported by Father Gaitley:
"What type of union is this? It is above all an interior union, a union of her essence with the ‘essence’ of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in her, lives in her. This was true from the first instant of her existence. It was always true; it will always be true.” ( Gaitley, p. 53)
“In what does this life of the Spirit in Mary consist? He himself is uncreated Love in her; the Love of the Father and of the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very Love of the Most Holy Trinity ... . In a much more precise, more interior, more essential manner, the Holy Spirit lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the depths of her very being” (Gaitley, p. 53-54)
"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, henceforth all generations shall call me
blessed.”
— From the Magnificat of Mary, Luke 1:46-48
In “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God,” I explored a similar Marian theology, and from it I think I can finally make sense of what Saint Maximilian has proposed. Mary, Theotokos , the Bearer of God, is an eternal repository of the Holy Spirit. Both my friend Pornchai Maximilian Moontri and I owe her a great debt — not for saving us from Earthly Powers of destruction, because they actually mean little, but for preserving us in faith despite them.
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“Remember that those who ask for Heaven of the Immaculata will surely achieve it because she is unable to deny us anything nor is the Lord God able to deny her anything. We shall shortly know exactly what it will be like in Heaven. Surely in a hundred years none of us will be walking on this Earth. But what are a hundred years in the face of what we have been through? Soon, therefore, provided we are well prepared under the protection of the Immaculata.”
— St. Maximilian Kolbe, 1941
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please spend some time in prayer and thanksgiving at the live feed of Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s own Adoration Chapel featured below after all our posts at Beyond These Stone Walls.
You may also like these related posts:
The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead
The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
In a Mirror Dimly: Divine Mercy in Our Darker Days
Your friends behind and Beyond These Stone Walls have endured many trials. Divine Mercy has been for them like a lighthouse guiding them through their darkest days.
Your friends behind and Beyond These Stone Walls have endured many trials. Divine Mercy has been for them like a lighthouse guiding them through their darkest days.
April 3, 2024 by Fr Gordon MacRae
Editor’s Note: In 2018, Mrs. Claire Dion visited Pornchai Moontri in prison and wrote a special post about the experience which we will link to at the end of this one. In the years leading up to that visit, the grace of Divine Mercy became for them both like a shining star illuminating a journey upon a turbulent sea. Divine Mercy is now their guiding light.
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I had clear plans for the day I began writing this post, one of many at this blog about Divine Mercy. But, as often happens here, my best laid plans fall easily apart. The prison Library where I have been the Legal Clerk for the last dozen years has been open only one day per week for several months due to staff shortages. During down times in the Law Library, I am able to use a typewriter that is in better condition than my own. So this day was to be a work day, and I had lots to catch up on, including writing this post.
I kept myself awake during the night before, mapping out in my mind all that I had to accomplish when morning came and how I would approach this post. Divine Mercy is, after all, central to my life and to the lives of many who visit this blog. But such plans are often disrupted here because control over the course of my day in prison is but an illusion.
Awake in my cell at 6:00 AM, I had just finished stirring a cup of instant coffee. Before I could even take a sip, I heard my name echoing off these stone walls as it was blasted on the prison P.A. system. It is always a jarring experience, especially upon awakening. I was being summoned to report immediately to a holding tank to await transport to God knows where. I knew that I might sit for hours for whatever ordeal awaited me. My first dismayed thought was that I could not bring my coffee.
It turned out that my summons was for transportation to a local hospital for an “urgent care” eye exam with an ophthalmologist. For strict security reasons I was not to know the date, time, or destination. Months ago, I developed a massive migraine headache and double vision. The double vision was alarming because I must climb and descend hundreds of stairs here each day. Descending long flights of stairs was tricky because I could not tell which were real and which would send me plummeting down a steel and concrete chasm.
So I submitted a request for a vision exam. My double vision lasted about six weeks, then in mid-February it disappeared as suddenly as it came. I then forgot that I had requested the consult. So two months later I made my way through the morning cold in the dark to a holding area where a guard pointed to an empty cell where I would sit in silence upon a cold concrete slab to await what is called here “a med run.”
Over the course of 30 years here, I have had five such medical “field trips.” That is an average of one every six years so there has been no accumulated familiarity with the experience. The guards follow strict protocols, as they must, requiring that I be chained in leg irons with hands cuffed and bound tightly at my waist. It is not a good look for a Catholic priest, but one which has likely become more prevalent in recent decades in America. During each of my “med runs” over 30 years, my nose began to itch intensely the moment my hands were tightly bound at my waist.
The ride to one of this State’s largest hospitals, Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, was rather nice, even while chained up in the back of a prison van. The two armed guards were silent but professional. My chains clinked loudly as they led me through the crowded hospital lobby. The large room fell silent. Amid whispers and furtive glances, I was just trying hard not to look like Jack the Ripper.
I was led to a bank of elevators where I was gently but firmly turned around to face an opposite wall lest I frighten any citizens emerging from one. As I stared at the wall, I made a slight gasp that caught the attention of one of the guards. Staring back at me on that wall opposite the elevators was a large framed portrait of my Bishop who I last saw too long ago to recall. I smiled at this moment of irony. He did not smile back.
A Consecration of Souls
The best part of this day was gone by the time I returned from my field trip to my prison cell. I was hungry, thirsty, and needed to deprogram from the humiliation of being paraded in chains before Pilate and the High Priests. My first thought was that I must telephone two people who had been expecting a call from me earlier that day. One of them was Dilia, our excellent volunteer editor in New York. The other was Claire Dion, and I felt compelled to call her first. Let me tell you about Claire.
As I finally made my way up 52 stairs to my cell that day, I reached for my tablet — which can place inexpensive internet-based phone calls. I immediately felt small and selfish. My focus the entire day up to this point was my discomfort and humiliation. Then my thoughts finally turned to Claire and all that she was enduring, a matter of life and death.
I mentioned in a post some years back that I grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, a rather rugged industrial city on the North Shore of Boston. There is a notorious poem about the City but I never knew its origin: “Lynn, Lynn, the City of Sin. You never go out the way you come in.” After writing all those years ago about growing up there, I received a letter from Claire in West Central Maine who also hails from Lynn. She stumbled upon this blog and read a lot, then felt compelled to write to me.
I dearly, DEARLY wish that I could answer every letter I receive from readers moved by something they read here. I cannot write for long by hand due to carpal tunnel surgery on both my hands many years ago. And I do not have enough typewriter time to type a lot of letters — but please don’t get me wrong. Letters are the life in the Spirit for every prisoner. Claire’s letter told me of her career as a registered nurse in obstetrics at Lynn Hospital back in the 1970s and 1980s. It turned out that she taught prenatal care to my sister and assisted in the delivery of my oldest niece, Melanie, who is herself now a mother of four.
There were so many points at which my life intersected with Claire’s that I had a sense I had always known her. In that first letter, she asked me to allow her to help us. My initial thought was to ask her to help Pornchai Moontri whose case arose in Maine. The year was late 2012. I had given up on my own future, and my quest to find and build one for Pornchai had collapsed against these walls.
Just one month prior to my receipt of that letter from Claire, Pornchai and I had professed Marian Consecration, after completing a program written by Father Michael Gaitley called 33 Days to Morning Glory. It was the point at which our lives and futures began to change.
Claire later told me that after reading about our Consecration, she felt compelled to follow, and also found it over time to be a life-changing event. She wanted to visit me, but this prison allows outsiders to visit only one prisoner so I asked her to visit Pornchai. He needed some contacts in Maine. The photo atop this post depicts that visit which resulted in her guest post, “My Visit with Pornchai Maximilian Moontri.”
The Divine Mercy Phone Calls
From that point onward, Claire became a dauntless advocate for us both and was deeply devoted to our cause for justice. In 2020, Pornchai was held for five months in ICE detention at an overcrowded, for-profit facility in Louisiana. It was the height of the global Covid pandemic, and we were completely cut off from contact with each other. But Claire could receive calls from either of us. I guess raising five daughters made her critically aware of the urgent necessity of telephones and the importance of perceiving in advance every attempt to circumvent the rules.
Claire devised an ingenious plan using two cell phones placed facing each other with their speakers in opposite positions. On a daily basis during the pandemic of 2020, I could talk with Pornchai in ICE detention in Louisiana and he could talk with me in Concord, New Hampshire. These brief daily phone calls were like a life preserver for Pornchai and became crucial for us both. Through them, I was able to convey information to Pornchai that gave him daily hope in a long, seemingly hopeless situation.
Each step of the way, Claire conveyed to me the growing depth of her devotion to Divine Mercy and the characters who propagated it, characters who became our Patron Saints and upon whom we were modeling our lives. Saints John Paul II, Maximilian Kolbe, Padre Pio, Faustina Kowalska, Therese of Lisieux, all became household names for us. They were, and are, our spiritual guides, and became Claire’s as well by sheer osmosis.
Each year at Christmas before the global Covid pandemic began, we were permitted to each invite two guests to attend a Christmas gathering in the prison gymnasium. We could invite either family or friends. It was the one time of the year in which we could meet each other’s families or friends. Pornchai Moontri and I had the same list so between us we could invite four persons besides ourselves.
The pandemic ended this wonderful event after 2019. However, for the previous two years at Christmas our guests were Claire Dion from Maine, Viktor Weyand, an emissary from Divine Mercy Thailand who, along with his late wife Alice became wonderful friends to me and Pornchai. My friend Michael Fazzino from New York, and Samantha McLaughlin from Maine were also a part of these Christmas visits. They all became like family to me and Pornchai. Having them meet each other strengthened the bond of connection between them that helped us so much. Claire was at the heart of that bond, and it was based upon a passage of the Gospel called “The Judgment of the Nations.” I wrote of it while Pornchai was in ICE Detention in 2020 in a post entitled, “A Not-So-Subtle Wake-Up Call from Christ the King.”
Father Michael Gaitley also wrote of it in a book titled You Did It to Me (Marian Press 2014). We were surprised to find a photo of Pornchai and me at the top of page 86. Both my post above and Father Gaitley’s book were based on the Gospel of Matthew (25:31-46). It includes the famous question posed in a parable by Jesus: “Lord, when did we see you in prison and visit you? And the King answered, ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brethren, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:39-40)
That passage unveils the very heart of Divine Mercy, and as Father Gaitley wrote so eloquently, it is part of a road map to the Kingdom of Heaven. It was Claire who pointed out to me that she was not alone on that road. She told me, “Every reader who comes from beyond these stone walls to visit your blog is given that same road map.”
The God of the Living
In Winter, 2023 Claire suffered a horrific auto accident. While returning home from Mass on a dark and rainy night a truck hit her destroying her vehicle and causing massive painful tissue damage to her body, but no permanent injury. I have been walking with her daily ever since. Miraculously, no life-threatening injuries were discovered in CT or MRI scans. However, the scans also revealed what appeared to possibly be tumors on her lung and spinal cord.
At first, the scans and everyone who read them, interpreted the tumors to be tissue damage related to the accident that should heal over time. They did not. In the months to follow, Claire learned that she has Stage Four Metastatic Lung Cancer which had spread to her spinal cord. The disruptions in her life came quickly after that diagnosis. I feared that she may not be with us for much longer. This has been devastating for all of us who have known and loved Claire. I was fortunate to have had a brief prison visit with her just before all this was set in motion.
Claire told me that on the night of the accident, she had an overwhelming sense of peace and surrender as she lay in a semi-conscious state awaiting first responders to extricate her from her crushed car. Once the cancer was discovered months later, she began radiation treatments and specialized chemotherapy in the hopes of shrinking and slowing the tumors. She is clear, however, that there is no cure. Claire dearly hoped to return to her home and enjoy her remaining days in the company of her family and all that was familiar.
As I write this, Claire has just learned that this will not be possible. Jesus told us (in Matthew 25:13) to always be ready for we know not the day or the hour when the Son of Man will come. I hope and pray that Claire will be with us for a while longer, but I asked her not to call this the last chapter of her life, for there is another and it is glorious. Just a week ago, Christ conquered death for all who believe and follow Him.
In all this time, Claire has been concerned for me and Pornchai, fearing that we may be left stranded. I made her laugh in my most recent call to her. I said, “Claire, I am not comfortable with the idea of you being in Heaven before me. God knows what you will tell them about me!” I will treasure the laughter this inspired for all the rest of my days.
This courageous and faith-filled woman told me in that phone call that she looks forward to my Divine Mercy post this year because Divine Mercy is her favorite Catholic Feast Day. I did not tell her that she IS my Divine Mercy post this year. Now, I suspect, she knows.
“Now we see dimly as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part, but then I shall understand fully even as I am fully understood.”
— St Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:12
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae:
Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please pray for Claire Dion in this time of great trial. I hope you will find solace in sharing her faith and in these related posts:
My Visit with Pornchai Maximilian Moontri by Claire Dion
A Not-So-Subtle Wake-Up Call from Christ the King
Divine Mercy in a Time of Spiritual Warfare
The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead
The commemoration of our beloved dead on All Souls Day has roots in ancient Christian tradition, Faith in the God of Life in the land of the living survives death.
The commemoration of our beloved dead on All Souls Day has roots in ancient Christian tradition, Faith in the God of Life in the land of the living survives death.
Introduction from Fr. Gordon MacRae: In the last days of October 2020, I wrote a special post to commemorate All Souls Day and to honor our beloved dead. One reviewer called it “A tour de force of Sacred Scripture on the most crucial question of all time: the meaning of life and death.” I’m not sure it actually rises to that level, but I thought it was an okay post.
It was the last one published at These Stone Walls, the older version of this blog that one week later was taken down and then reborn anew as Beyond These Stone Walls. I wrote of how and why that happened in “Life Goes On, Behind and Beyond These Stone Walls.”
It was not planned this way, but my post to mark the commemoration of All Souls was published in the midst of a global pandemic just days before the most contentious U.S. presidential election of modern time. That was also the time in which my friend, Pornchai Moontri, had been handed over to ICE for a long and grueling ordeal leading up to deportation to his native Thailand.
For many readers, my All Souls Day post was relegated to a far back burner then so I have decided to rewrite it and post it anew. It is, after all, a matter of life and death. Please ponder it and share it with others.
Like all of you reading this, I, too, have been touched by death in ways that have changed my life. I once wrote of how death left me not only grieving, but entirely alone and stranded. It was a post about the essence of Purgatory and why it should not be feared. That post — which I highly recommend if you have ever been touched by death, is “The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts.”
It is one of the mysteries of Sacred Scripture that certain concepts exist there in almost equal measure with their polar opposites. I wrote during Holy Week, 2020, of the presence of both good and evil at the same table in “Satan at the Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.” Many readers expressed amazement at my revelation that the concepts of light and darkness are represented in Scripture in almost equal measure, but with light just only slightly more prevalent.
I was surprised, for this post, to discover that the same is true in the matter of life and death. I conducted some research into the various permutations of the word, “death” in Sacred Scripture. The terms, death, dead, die, died, and killed have a combined appearance for a total of 1,620 times in our Old and New Testaments. The same research into occurrences of the word, “life” included the terms, life, alive, living, lives and lived. The combined appearances of “life” totaled 1,621. Pro-life wins!
Our Scriptures, and especially their revelations in the words of Jesus who had … well … the “inside scoop,” not only give life and death almost equal weight, but place them on a continuum. This becomes most evident in a challenge of Jesus to the Sadducees who rejected any notion of an afterlife or resurrection:
“You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God … And as for the resurrection from the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God? ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
Jesus was citing the Book of Exodus (3:1-6) and the story of Moses’ first encounter with God in the burning bush. By Yahweh’s self-description that he is the God of these Patriarchs who died long ago, Jesus brings his listeners to a conclusion that they must still live for God to still be their God. Their ongoing presence with God is the decisive precondition for future resurrection.
For Jesus, this ongoing presence of the soul with God is a continuation of the very life you know — but without the excess baggage. What must such a state be like? I sometimes hear from people who long to have some affirmation from their departed loved ones that they still exist. Do we really need such evidence? One of the most hopeful verses in all of Scripture comes from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, and it has an answer:
“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world?… If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on Earth. For you have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”
The Resurrection and the Life
There is another way to phrase what I wrote above: “For Jesus, this ongoing presence of the soul with God is a continuation of the very life you know…” It is also a continuation of the very life that knows you. It is that which is imparted in our ensoulment as being “in the image and likeness of God” (Gen. 1:26). In the Biblical account of creation, filled with rich theological meaning, “The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). I wrote of this once in “Inherit the Wind: Pentecost and the Breath of God.”
What animates us, what makes us living beings in the image of God, is that which survives the body. In Biblical Hebrew, the word that is translated in English as “soul” is “nepeŝ.” A survey of its use throughout the Hebrew Scriptures shows that there is no adequate word in English that captures its meaning. In the Genesis account of the creation of man, it means the totality of the self, both one’s spiritual and physical being. The Prophet Jeremiah shows that we can prove our nepeŝ to be righteous (3:11), that we must not try to deceive our nepeŝ (37:9), or expose our nepeŝ to evil (26:19).
It is, for the Prophet Ezekiel, the source of our capacity for empathy; “To know the nepeŝ of the stranger” is to know how it feels to be a stranger (Ezekiel 23:9). It is the subject of human attributes of the heart (Psalm 139:14, Proverbs 19:4). It is also a source of our consciousness (Esther 4:13, Proverbs 23:7). There are 317 references to it in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the New Testament, it is that which, for Mary, “magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:46).
Of interest, in the Greek of the New Testament, “nepeŝ” is translated as “psyche.” It is the source of one’s consciousness and life. Some Scripture scholars equate the “ego” of Freudian psychology as coming closer to the meaning of nepeŝ than any other word. It is the source of one’s self, one’s identity and self-awareness. It is what remains of the immortality lost in Eden and restored in Christ. Our nepeŝ survives our death.
To believe in God and not believe in the reality of our soul is folly. Hope, the assurance of salvation, is the anchor of the soul (Hebrews 6:19). The New Testament presentation of the immortality of the soul is not a new idea, but a radically new revelation of the meaning of life and salvation illuminated by the Resurrection of Jesus.
The word, “resurrection” appears only twice in Hebrew Scripture, and both are in the Second Book of Maccabees. When Eleazar and seven brothers were being tortured to death for their fidelity to God, one of the brothers proclaimed to Antiochus the king:
“I cannot but choose to die at the hands of men and to cherish the hope that God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life.”
That account is also referenced in the Book of Daniel (3:16-18). It was written in about 150 BC during the emergence of a Messianic Age in Judaism. The other account found in Second Maccabees also presents Biblical support for the existence of Purgatory and the Spiritual Work of Mercy to pray and atone for the dead:
“The noble Judas (Maccabeus) took up a collection … and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In doing this, he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection … therefore he made atonement for the dead that they might be delivered from their sin.”
Almost Heaven
Despite the famous song of John Denver, Heaven is not in West Virginia. Not even almost. I take the liberty of capitalizing it because what the Hebrew Scriptures refer to as “Heaven” and “the heavens” are two different places. The heavens refer to the ancient Semitic conception of the visible Universe. God is there, but only because He is everywhere. “Heaven,” on the other hand, refers to the dwelling place of God. In modern translation, it has 575 references in Sacred Scripture as opposed to 113 for “the heavens.”
There are multiple passages in both Testaments of Scripture that refer to Heaven as the dwelling place of God, but in some, the dwelling of God is said to be in the “Heaven of Heavens,” or in “the Highest Heaven” (see Deuteronomy 10:14, 1 Kings 8:27, and Psalm 148:4). Hebrew literature was influenced by the use of the Hebrew word, “ŝamāyim” for Heaven, though it is in the plural. There are obscure references to stages or levels of Heaven. Being a Jew educated in the traditions of the Pharisees, this conception was the basis for Saint Paul’s description (2 Corinthians 12:2) that he was taken up to the Third Heaven which is identified with Paradise:
“I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third Heaven – whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into Paradise.”
I wrote of the Scriptural use of the word “Paradise” some years ago in one of the most-read posts on Beyond These Stone Walls, “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.” The Greek term, “Parádeisos, came into Greek from the Akkadian term for Paradise. It is used three times in the New Testament: here, in St. Paul’s reference to Heaven; In the Book of Revelations (2:7) as the eternal dwelling that awaits the saints; and in the above-cited link referencing the Gospel of St. Luke (23:43) and his account of the words of Jesus to the criminal who comes to faith while being crucified next to Him: “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
The same term, Parádeisos, appears in the Septuagint, the only surviving translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. The word, “Septuagint” means “seventy,” referring to the number of Greek translators of the Hebrew Bible who developed it in the Second Century B.C. It is sometimes referred to by its Roman numerals: The LXX. Back to my point, the word, “Parádeisos” makes its first Biblical appearance in Genesis 2:8. It was a reference to the original state of Eden before the Fall of Adam, a state restored to human souls on the Cross of Christ.
It is the inheritance of true discipleship, the qualities of which are described in the Judgment of the Nations (Matthew 25:31-46). One of them is that “when I was in prison you came to me.” If you are reading this, then you have fulfilled that tenet. Jesus told us that His Father’s House has many mansions. In his parting words to me, my friend, Pornchai Moontri, said that we will next meet there — and we will one day have a house there — and it will be more than 60-square feet!
Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please share this post and join us in prayer for our beloved dead family and friends on All Souls Day and throughout November.
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