At the beginning of this month, we celebrated the Solemnity of All Saints. It is a feast that marks the beginning of the darkest 12 weeks of the year by celebrating the light of the saints, our own mortality and the universal call to holiness. In fact, the whole month of November is a time for reflection on the inevitability of death and the need to pray for those who have gone before us in faith. A question often arises amidst these reflections: What happens to us after death?
If you listen to many eulogies offered at funeral liturgies today, it is commonly believed that the deceased has become an angel in heaven. I’m not sure when and where people began to believe that human beings, after their death, could become angels. Certainly, the 1946 Frank Capra film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” perpetuated the idea.
You know the story well, Clarence Odbody, a once-human, returns to earth nearly 200 years after his death to serve as guardian angel to George Bailey. Without a good work, Clarence will remain an “angel second class” without his wings. On Christmas Eve, Clarence keeps George from suicide by jumping into the river and forcing George to rescue him rather than jump to his death. Having completed his heavenly task, the last line of the movie tells us that “every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings” – and thus Clarence is promoted to an “angel first class.”
The teaching of the Church is clear. Human beings and angels are two different orders of creation. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that the “Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirms that God ‘from the beginning of time made at once out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then the human creature, who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body.’” (CCC# 327)
Related we may be, but human beings are distinct from the angels and can never become angels after our death. To believe that is to deny what God created us to be and the importance of our bodies, which according to the faith of the Church, will be glorified in the resurrection of the dead. Unlike the angels – who are and always will be pure spirits – we are a union of body and soul and will be so for all eternity.
Instead of hoping to become an angel, our earthly journey of faith is a call to holiness, an invitation to become saints. Saints were ordinary human beings who modeled their lives on the life of Christ. They were sinners who sought forgiveness. They were people who lived a life of “heroic virtue” and reached perfection in charity, often through suffering, that brought the holiness necessary to enter God’s presence. The first step in becoming a saint is believing that you are called to be one.
Most of us, of course, will fall short of that lofty goal because of our imperfections. Thus, as the Church teaches, a final purification called purgatory will be required. “All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of eternal salvation; but after death, they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven” (CCC #1030). We pray today for the souls in purgatory in hope that those who follow us will pray for us during our final purification.
At the conclusion of a funeral Mass, the priest or cantor sings or says the beautiful words of the “In Paradisum”: “May the angels lead you into Paradise.” In these days, may we ask the angels and the saints to intercede for us that we may have the grace to persevere in holiness and ultimately let the angels do their job in “leading us into Paradise” where the communion of saints will welcome us.
Father Robert E. Hughes is Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia for the Diocese of Camden.
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