Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Father Don Wolf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, offers a Catholic perspective on the issues confronting each person today.
Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
October 20, 2024 | "The Eternal Dance of Life and Death"
Ever wondered how the boundary between life and death can shape our spiritual journey? Together, we'll uncover the significance of Halloween in relation to All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, offering insights into how the lives of those who've passed continue to influence us. By examining the haunting story of King Saul and the witch of Endor, we confront the forbidden arts of necromancy and reflect on the delicate balance between honoring the dead and respecting the divine boundaries of life and death.
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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.
This is Living Catholic with Fr Don Wolfe. Living Catholic is a fresh look at issues confronting each of us today. This show deals with living Catholic, what that means for Catholics, as well as the impact on the rest of society. You certainly don't have to be Catholic to enjoy this show. And now your host, Fr Don Wolfe.
Speaker 1:Welcome Oklahoma to Living Catholic. This is Father Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Oklahoma City and rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. We're coming up on Halloween, so an opportunity to think a little about what Halloween is actually, which is the Eve of All Saints, which is itself the day before the feast of all souls, that is, we think about those who have died. It is said that the veil between the living and the dead is thin and translucent, because they are close to us, the dead. Although they have died and have passed away from the concerns of rigors of our life in this world, they have not left us. They are part of our lives. We don't think of this very often. In fact we have to be reminded of it over and over, but it's true the dead are with us. Of course, we shouldn't think of this truth as if it were the background of a horror movie plot. How many times have we seen the stunned faces of the characters of some loathsome movie as they encounter the dead among them, unresting and angry, about to wreak vengeance on those who have wronged them? Those plot lines make any talk about the dead into a twisted parody of what we mean, while there are many elements to the truth of the dead. Let's talk about their presence in the obviously positive way. First, we have to realize, of course, that no matter how we talk of those who have died, we do affirm of course they are no longer with us. In the same way that's obvious, especially to those who have lost someone recently there's no way to encounter them as if they were still here, walking and talking among us.
Speaker 1:The most piercing part of mourning the death of those we love is the incontrovertible truth of what we have lost, which is them. They've passed away from us. And to quote the prophet Samuel, who was being called up by the witch of Endor, by the beleaguered King Saul, to appear from the dead to give Saul counsel, samuel said you're coming to me, I'm not coming to you. The dead do not appear to us, nor should they. And one more thing on this topic the Catechism warms everyone about those practices that presume to commune with the dead. To call on the dead is the practice of necromancy. It's as old as humanity and has been practiced in every society, and the catechism condemns it out of hand and completely, whatever its true nature is, whether it really is a communion with the dead or simply the seduction by demons to take advantage of broken hearts. It is a violation of the integrity of the spheres of human conduct. Everybody should stay away from such things. They do exist, in fact.
Speaker 1:The practice in the book of Kings detailing what King Saul did regarding Samuel should give us some pause. Saul was terrified because his kingdom was slipping from his grasp. He didn't know what to do or to whom to turn. Samuel had been his spiritual guide throughout his kingship, but Samuel had died. Saul had forbidden witchcraft and necromancy from his kingdom, but as a measure of his desperation, he sought out one of the remaining witches which made it go to show how ineffective his ban really was, and he went to her. She dutifully called up Samuel from the dead. In this account, there's no hint there was deception on the part of the witch or of Samuel. He really did appear from the dead and he truly spoke to Saul, but it was a violation of the integrity of the kingdoms of life and death. It was one more time that Saul was hapless in understanding his role as king and his mission of practicing the Lord's will.
Speaker 1:Necromancy is real, but it is abjured, forbidden. But the dead are close to us. They make up a part of our lives because in a real sense they have never left us behind. That is to say, they pass away from us in their day-to-day living, but their influence over us never ends. Just the other day I was with one of my cousins during his stay in the hospital. I've known him all his life and I was around his mother and father all the time I grew up. They've been gone for decades now, but as he was talking I could tell they live in him. The way he moves his hands, when he gestures, the manner in which he emphasizes his words at the end of the sentence, he is exactly like his mother. When he speaks, I hear her. It's hard to describe precisely, of course, but we all know what we mean. It's not like his parents are alive in him, as if they were present and animating his frame and controlling his thoughts. He truly is himself and no one else, but they are present in him, as if they were present and animating his frame and controlling his thoughts. He truly is himself and no one else, but they are present in him. Their lives made him. There's no way to ignore or to deny their presence in his life. The mere passage to the halls of death is not enough to erase their life in him, and this is true for all of us in ways we can scarcely imagine.
Speaker 1:A good friend of mine said once that if we regularly had the chance to see six generations of a family together, instead of the mere three generations that we expect, we'd have an entirely new understanding of human nature. With three generations grandparents, parents, child we can begin to see some of the patterns and practices that form us. But were we able to see six generations and experience the commonalities and peculiarities that pass from one generation to the next, we'd have a richer understanding of what we inherit from those who stand in front of us. Not only that, we'd have a much more complete experience of how those who have died still stand with us as we live. They are present to us in how we live and act and decide More than poetry. This is a truth beyond contestation. In fact, it is validated from, of all things, the information and therapy we have about family trauma.
Speaker 1:What happens in a family life because of disease, addiction or abuse affects the constitution and the potential of a family. For generations it's not quite a family curse, but the outcome of betrayal or the effects of sin in a family can touch everyone and can sound throughout the whole family structure. For years we have mitigated some of these effects by identifying them and putting in the work to name and understand them so as to identify and strive against them. But these influences and their effects are certainly real and they touch the lives of those involved in them. The long arms of the dead do touch the living.
Speaker 1:It used to be said that certain families were cursed Again. That's a common trope of horror novels, from the Castle of Otranto in the late 1700s up to Stephen King. But there is a truth to it. Those who have offended against the good of others bear the weight of that offense to the family members who come after them. No one is condemned because of the sin of an ancestor, but no one is completely untouched by it either.
Speaker 1:And the flip side is also true. A family defined by charity and forbearance, by love and forgiveness, is a place in which the good can flourish. Those are not disembodied graces, but are instead practices that imprint themselves on the lives touched by them. Although those who practice these virtues and define their lives by them may be long dead, the impact of their goodness is felt by those who have inherited their effects. The dead and the content of their lives matter because they live with us, they live within us, and of course we're talking about regular people here. There are no purely wonderful families, as there are no purely evil ones either. Each person and every family is a mixture of both. Certain aspects predominate in one over the other, but good and evil are jumbled together all the time. But we also know such things are not merely personal. They are communal and affect all who come after them. No good act is without its consequences that stretch out generations, just as every bad action stretches out through the years to touch every person in every part of family life.
Speaker 1:The flip side of this realization is also alive in us. When we choose the good, we are not simply independent of every person who faces this choice, as if we were the first person ever to face the decision. If we come from an environment in which charity comes first or forgiveness is prized, then our choice is facilitated by all of the choices that have come before us. When the road is wide and smooth, it's easier to find our way on it, and the same is to be said for the evil. We can choose the way to. Evil can become almost irresistible if we're surrounded by it and raised in its shadows. When faced with the choice to abet or resist. If evil has formed us, the choice for it becomes the natural one.
Speaker 1:The dead and their lives and their choices are alive in us. It is true, these memories we carry around are fractured and incomplete. Once the dead are gone, no matter how close we would like to hold them, they slowly escape from us. I recall, for example, the time I realized I could no longer call to mind what my mother's voice sounded like. For decades I remembered her and how she sounded when she talked. I remembered her and how she sounded when she talked. But when I was about 45 and my mother had been dead for 30 years, I realized one day I couldn't remember the sound of her voice. I remember her. I recall all number of moments and details she was my mother, after all but I can't bring to mind the details of her voice. She died long before it was normal to have video or audio recordings. Her voice has passed into shadow. It is no longer available to me.
Speaker 1:Holding on to the dead, no matter how we want to, isn't easy, but we do hold on. We have to. It's written into our awareness. In fact, cemeteries are the place constructed so that we can remember and value the dead among us. In our day and time, we endure them as little more than open green spaces dotted by gravestones, but they are much more than that. In Catholic tradition, they are an integral part of the life of the parish. Traditionally, establishing a parish also meant staking out a place to bury the dead, and why not? The life of the parish? Traditionally establishing a parish also meant staking out a place to bury the dead, and why not? The life of the parish also means accounting for the truth of dying. Cemeteries are integral to the life of grace. Two of the most important pieces of real estate in my life are the cemeteries of the parishes of Holy Trinity in Okarchee and Immaculate Conception in Oklahoma City. Both of them contain the family trees from which my branch grows. If I have a chance to visit them with friends, I invite them to come with me as I walk through the cemetery and introduce them to my family. They're all there.
Speaker 1:If you talk to those who have lost a loved one recently, almost everyone has a story of how, for a moment, they saw or encountered the one they lost in some way. A friend of mine once described that after her husband died unexpectedly, she saw a little red Volkswagen, just like the one he used to drive, weaving in and out of traffic day after day, and she swore the driver was her husband. She could never quite pull up to the car or see behind the steering wheel, but it always seems as if he was there, just out of reach. I have my own story of that kind of encounter. My mother died in August of 1972. In December of that year, when I was working at a grocery store, I looked up from my cash register one day and saw my mother standing in front of me. She didn't say anything, she only pushed her cart full of groceries up next to the counter so I could check them through. I was overwhelmed. I stood there mute. This woman in front of me looked exactly like my mother. Of course I wanted to talk to her, to say something, and at the same time I knew it couldn't be her. So I stood there frozen at the checkout, stand struck, speechless. I did my job, she paid her bill and then she left without saying a word. I watched her leave. It was an encounter I couldn't believe, but it was as real as the full moon.
Speaker 1:These are moments in which we encounter something. That person we see doesn't have to be the dead among us in order for us to see the ones who have passed away from us. I think these are moments where the presence of the dead touch us. It's not as if they have floated in from the beyond to fill our moments. They are present because the circumstances of our moments combine to open us to the deep reality of their presence in our lives. The deep power of our memory touches ground, then. That's what we see in our lives. Those who have passed away from us are present to us and they are closer than we usually imagine, even if they are limited only to the fragile power of memory.
Speaker 1:The Mexican approach to the opportunity to hold on to the dead highlights how close those who have passed away are to us when they celebrate their Day of the Dead. If you've ever been around Mexico this time of year, you know how common it is to memorialize the dead and to focus on their presence in life. This has some bizarre overtones for us Anglos, but their celebrations are a way to bring to mind what we gloss over, which is that the dead are among us. In Mexico, this time of year, there are displays of skeletons dressed up as if going to a party. Mr and Mrs and the kids' skeletons, all together in their finery, are together as if on their way to a party. It is as if the dead are simply part of the family, acting in and being a part of the world we all recognize and understand, which is, of course, exactly the point. To celebrate this way is to acknowledge and understand they are a part of our lives, no matter that they lie in the cemetery, beyond our reach, because the dead are present to us.
Speaker 1:This familiarity with the dead certainly fades among the urban life of large Mexican cities cut off from the rural roots of their ancestors, but the sensibility of the familiarity with the dead is deeply rooted in Mexican culture. If you're from a small town and grow up in the place where your ancestors have been buried for generations, the cemetery isn't simply the place where the dead are buried. It's the place where your family is To be familiar with. The cemetery is to be part of the life of the family. Not only do the remains of the ancestors lie there, the stories that built their lives remain among the living. This makes for an intimacy with them that follows every part of life. It would certainly be as if the dead were present to us, walking among us. It would certainly be as if the dead were present to us, walking among us, participating in what we do. You might even say it is as if a family of skeletons were walking along the pathway of life along with the rest of us. This is a theme in the description of Mexican culture and Mexican character.
Speaker 1:In the Cormac McCarthy novel the Cities of the Plains, set in the Southwest during the late 1940s, there is a scene that captures this sense. The main character, an American in love with a Mexican girl, finds himself in a back alley fight with an older Mexican man in Juarez. The man asks him are you ready to die? As they square off in the alley, if you're not ready to die, you don't know what it's like to be Mexican and you know nothing of Mexico. He says to the American it's not fatalism or some type of death wish. It's an expression of the intimacy with the dead that's part of the culture.
Speaker 1:Indeed, all through contemporary Latin American literature there is this sense of the awareness of the dead, the literary genre of magical realism interweaves the living and the dead so that the characters of those who have died have as much influence and sway on the living as any of the other living characters do. These descriptions of the interaction of the living and the dead are often used to describe the dead hand of oppression and the numbing power of the structures of subjugation, all dealt to the living from the dead. Many of the authors who are not overtly believers and so often, find no way out of the powers of resentment and vengeance still alive in them from the past. But for us North American readers, their works become an insight into the power of the dead to affect the lives of the living, an insight that doesn't come readily to us. Of course, as in all literature, there's also another side to the genre. It can be funny.
Speaker 1:Using the themes of magical realism, john Nichols' novel the Milagro-Beanfield War brings a humorous take on the struggles of a small group of people in a forgotten town. Take on the struggles of a small group of people in a forgotten town, overwhelmed by the powers of big business, who are accompanied in their struggles by the invisible world and the powerful personalities of those who helped make the town and its people from time gone by. It's also a reminder that while we face up to our challenges and decisions on our own, we're not simply alone. We are accompanied by the armies of those who have come before us. The great company of the dead are with us Also. It's a novel fun to read, just because it's fun, apart from the intricate themes of the intersections of the living and the dead, for adults only. But the dead are close to us in more than the power of memory, the influence of culture or the familial ticks of our personality. The dead are part of the church we're baptized into and are formed by.
Speaker 1:In my confirmation classes over the years I've always asked the question how many people are in the parish? Most of the time the kids haven't thought about it. So they begin speculating on the number of people they see on Sunday. I remind them there are other masses. So they double or triple or, in the case of Sacred Heart, quintuple the number that they were thinking about. I then ask them to consider all of the people who should be there but are not. They usually double the number again, although they might do well to quintuple it again. Then we get to the point I ask them are there any that we've forgotten? They look puzzled. So I ask them should we include the people in the cemetery? Aren't they a part of the parish? And the answer is clear of course they are.
Speaker 1:Were we a stable parish filled with people who had been here for generation upon generation, we'd understand it better. In fact, my family has been at Sacred Heart since its founding in 1911. So I have some sensibility concerning this reality. But most of the members of the parish have come recently, so they aren't aware of its history and don't feel connected to it. But whether they've just got here or have been here for 120 years, the parish they join includes all those who lie in the cemeteries throughout the city. They're part of the life of the parish and they belong here with us. Our prayer, our celebration, our liturgy, our presence include all of them. They never stop being a part of us.
Speaker 1:This means that we are all together in our project of worshiping the Lord and responding to the call for charity and forgiveness. It's actually quite powerful when we understand that when we say the parish of Sacred Heart, we mean all those who were alive, in presence and active during the First World War, the Great Depression, world War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the troubled year of 1968, the Reagan election, 9-11, and all of the great and small moments of life that has filled the last century up to today. We are all together in the church. Our struggles are not just ours. That's what belonging to a parish means. We don't just go it alone. The gift of grace given to us is given to the community for the good of all and for the progress of all Altogether. We come to God in our brokenness and are together formed in the hope and the promise of God's grace and forgiveness. This is true of us as we live and the promise of God's grace and forgiveness. This is true of us as we live. It's also true of us as we die.
Speaker 1:My friend, father Nick Rice, has a description of this interwoven aspect of our lives as we make our way together. He describes the final judgment in terms of the lives we have been a part of and the common world we have shared. In his description, as we approach judgment, we stand mute. With us are all those whom we have helped in life. They will stand and testify for us as we meet the great judge, and their testimony is of the difference we've made in their lives. While we don't have to take his vision as the gospel truth about the content of our lives, it is a compelling image of how we make our way in the world and into the next world together. Of course, the dead are with us. They constitute the sum of our lives and the gifts of who we are and who we will be. I can't think of a better description of the parish we are a part of. They are the ones we're helping to get to heaven, they are the ones helping us to get to heaven, and all of us together are on the journey together, no matter where we stand on the road together.
Speaker 1:It's said that on All Saints' Eve, otherwise known as the Eve of All Hallows or, in obsolete pronunciations, the Ene of all Hallows, also known as Hallow-een, the veil between our world and the world of those passed away lifts, and they are uniquely present to us. This may be true. If it is, may this Halloween be a blessing to us and fill us with the delight of those who have passed away from us and now accompany us more closely for an evening. If it's only a rumor, may it be a reminder that every day is when we live in the company of all those who have walked the same journey we're walking and who now glory in the light of the Lord's presence. May we look forward to the same Back in just a moment. Welcome back to our final segment, faith in Verse.
Speaker 1:We have a poem today called he's a Little Older Now. He's a little older now. He gets lost easily. He'll sail into a room and forget it all breezily. How to leave where he came from? All that entirely, until he's confused and uncertain, and that direly, it's sad, sure, so different from normal. Completely. He's unburdened by logic or succession, neatly, unlike before, when every moment was scheduled keenly so that the day unfolded as planned and written meanly. Now, however, each moment is a new journey wholly. He finds every place a discovery, a wilderness, that's. He's a little older now. The heart of the faith is to live Catholic. So I hope that you join us here on Living Catholic in the weeks to come as we explore more deeply what it means to follow the Lord and live the Catholic faith.
Speaker 2:Living Catholic is a production of Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcrorg.