Exequies: what reaches the dead, Gregory, Chrysostom and Cyprian against mourning, and Augustine on the care of the dead

other ritesritus: rite performed for the dead, it is clear that they are either contrary to those who are to be purged, or neutral, or less useful: contrary, if they savour of sin; less useful, if, these being omitted, their contraries would have profited more; and neutral, supposing that they are neither good nor evil morally.¹ The first and the third occur more commonly. Hence the first part is clear from this: that, as all things done meritoriously for the dead who are capable profit them, so all demeritorious things that are pretended to be done for them hinder their profit; for such solemnity does not profit the dead body, since it lacks sense, nor does it profit the soul except in so far as it is merit; for otherwise it would be indifferent to the soul’s profit, as it is indifferent to the advantage of the devil or of one of the blessed.² This, then, I suppose as a maxim; and it is clear through Augustine in On the Care to Be Had for the Dead, and it is set in the Decretum, C.13 q.2: "Let us not think," he says, "that anything reaches the dead for whom we have care, except what we supplicate for them by the sacrifices either of the altar, or of prayer, or of alms." 539And it follows: "But whatever is spent on the body to be buried is not a safeguard of salvation but an office of humanity."³ But the same also seems evident of itself, considering how profit could come to a dead body or to a separated spirit. And from this follows the folly of the living, who grieve more for bodily death than for the death of the soul through sin, and are more anxious about the solemnity of the exequies of a neighbour or friend than about constancy in meritorious manners of lifeconversacio: manner of life, through which alone suffragessuffragia: suffrages belong to him.⁴ Hence the decree of blessed Gregory, C.13 q.2, Anime defunctorum: "The care of the funeral," he says, "the condition of the burial, the pomp of the exequies, are rather solaces of the living than aids of the dead. If a costly burial profits the impious at all, a mean one or none will harm the pious."⁵ Chrysostom on the Epistle to the Hebrews, as it is set out there: "Wherever we are buried, the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof; let it be done as it ought to be done. But to mourn, to bewail and to lament those who depart from this life comes from faint-heartedness. And this is understood to arise from despair of the future resurrection. Hence the Apostle does not say without qualificationsimpliciter / secundum quid: without qualification / in a certain respect, 'We will not have you ignorant concerning them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful', but adds: 'even as others who have no hope.'" And the same teachingsentencia: CONTEXTUAL: teaching / sentence is clear in the two chapters following.⁶ Again, it seems that such murmuring is against the Lord, whom we must believe to will every man to die; but it is not lawful so to oppose the will of God. For if I know that it is of God’s good pleasure, and so just, and makes for the order 540and beauty of the universe, that Peter should now be slain by the Lord, how is it lawful for me to murmur back against this justice and beauty which so pleases God?⁷ Hence in C.13 q.2 it is written thus under the authority of Cyprian: "How preposterous it is, and how perverse, that while we ask that God’s will be done, when he calls us forth and summons us from this world we do not at once obey the command of his will, and like stubborn servants are brought into the Lord’s presence with sadness and grief, departing hence by the bond of necessity, not by the obedience of the will: how do we wish to be honoured with heavenly rewards by him to whom we come unwilling? It has been commanded," he says, "by the Lord, that I should constantly bear witness and publicly preach that the brethren freed from the world by the divine summons are not to be mourned, since we know that, departing from the world, they are not lost but sent before."⁸

In this saying he seems to hint at a threefold reason. The first, from this: that no one ought to pray contrary to himself; now we pray God, "Thy will be done" everywhere; therefore we ought not to will contrary to this. The second reason is from this: that one who is to be saved must suffer death meritoriously, and consequently willingly. The third reason consists in this: that one who loves himself or another ought joyfully to accept his own advancement, as death is to everyone who is to be saved; and for the foreknownprescitus, -i: the foreknown also it is for good, since he continually harms the churchecclesia: church more and demerits further.⁹ On the opposite side are the customconsuetudo: custom and laws of the church about the care to be had for the dead and about ecclesiastical burial: hence the church praises the offerings of Judas Maccabeus, Maccabees 12, and the burial of the dead is counted among the works of mercy, for 541which Tobias is praised in Tobias.¹⁰ Hence the decree cites Augustine, On the Care to Be Had for the Dead, in these words: "Although the cares taken for the dead do not profit all for whom they are made, but only those who, while they lived, had merited that they should profit them; yet because we do not discern who these are, it is fitting to do them for all the regenerate."¹¹ And he assigns a threefold cause of it: the first is the profit of the dead who are capable; the second is the stirring of the affection of the survivors; and the third is the natural instinct, meritorious when it has been formed by charitycaritas: charity, of those who take such care. For the first he writes thus: "For it is better that these things be superfluous to those whom they neither harm nor profit, than that they be lacking to those whom they profit." He means that one must intend to pray generally for all the faithful, understandingsubintelligere: understand as implied the condition as implied, and with God assigninglimitare; limites: to assign (an office); limits the suffrage to those who are capable.¹² For the second cause, it is clear that by this the devotion of the survivors is stirred and their occupation with a meritorious act is called forth. Hence Augustine: "Each one does this more diligently for his friends, so that it may be done likewise for him." And as to the third cause it is clear, since it is necessary to clear away the carcasses of beasts, much more the corpses of men, who are dearer and infect more. Hence Augustine: "This," he says, "is an office of humanity, according to the affection by which no one ever hated his own flesh. Hence it is fitting that one take what care one can for a neighbour’s flesh, when the spirit that took this care has departed from it. And if those do this who do not believe the resurrection of the flesh, how much more 542ought those to do it who believe, so that the office spent on a body that will rise again and remain eternally may be in a way a manifest testimony of that same faith."¹³ And it is clear, since such a work is not virtuous of itself but very much by accident, that it happens to be done now well, now badly. And we must beware of malice, lest we aim principally at the pomp of the world, and lest we omit what is more necessary; for there is no more necessary duty to be done for the dead than to live virtuously. He therefore takes bodily care for his dead inordinately who attends more to that than to the superabundance of virtue in the soul.¹⁴ Do you wish, then, with affection to profit the soul of the departed? Exercise yourself in the school of the virtues; and the more you do this, the more profit, other things being equal, you make for the dead. It is needful, therefore, according to the rules of charity, that the survivor "have pity on his own soul, pleasing God"; and on that follows most effectually the suffrage of the dead.¹⁵