Communion of Saints

PRIVILEGED COMMUNICATION WITHIN THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

One of our wonderful Christian doctrines is our belief in the communion of the saints. To believe in the communion of saints is to believe that we can still tend to unfinished business in our relationships, even after death. We can still talk to those who have died and say the words of love, forgiveness, gratitude, and regret that ideally we should have spoken earlier.

All of us have experienced situations where, inside of a family, a friendship circle, community, or group of colleagues, a bitter difference grows up and festers so that eventually there is an unresolvable tension. Things have happened that can no longer be undone. Then someone in the family or community dies and that death changes everything.

In a strange way the death brings with it a peace, a clarity, and a charity which, prior to it, were not possible. Why is this? It's not simply because the death has changed the chemistry of the group or because, the source of the tension or bitterness has died. It happens because, as Luke teaches in his Passion narrative, death can wash things clean. Death releases forgiveness, in the same way as Jesus forgave the good thief upon the cross as he died. 



This can be an immense consolation to us. What we can't bring to wholeness in this life can, if we are attentive to the communion of saints, be completed afterwards. We still have communication, privileged communication, with our loved ones after death. Among the marvels of that lies the fact that we still have a chance to fix the things, after death, that we were powerless to mend before death took a loved one away.

(Source: Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI)