In November the Church remembers the faithful departed with greater intensity, especially by offering the Sacrifice of the Mass for them. We on earth want the holy souls in purgatory to join the blessed forever in heaven. In the communion of the Church, we also want to be remembered in a particular way after our own passing from this life.
My favorite account of this wish from the early Church is from Saint Augustine. Near the end of Book 9 of the Confessions, Saint Augustine recounts the last days on earth of his mother, Saint Monica. Saint Augustine was baptized in Milan on April 24, 387—the conversion that Saint Monica had earnestly prayed for with copious tears. Sometime after the baptism, while waiting in Ostia, along the Italian seacoast, to sail back to their homeland of North Africa, Saint Monica became deathly ill. Saint Augustine’s brother thought that surely their mother should not die in Italy. Perhaps they could sail in time for her to die and be buried in Africa? Saint Monica gave a maternal correction and stated in no uncertain terms: “Lay this body anywhere. Let not the care for it trouble you at all. I ask only this of you: that you remember me at the Lord’s altar, wherever you be.”
Saint Augustine records the reason for his mother’s confidence in God while dying far from her homeland and being buried in a strange place. “Nothing is far from God,” she said. “I need not fear that God be ignorant at the end of the world where he is to raise me up.” Saint Monica’s faith was simple and pure. Nothing is far from God, and our Creator can raise us up incorruptible from the dust of the earth on the Last Day wherever that dust is. After relaying such wisdom from this holy woman, Augustine says that in the ninth day of her illness, in the fifty-sixth year of her life, and in the thirty-third year of his, she passed from this world.
Saint Augustine repeats his mother’s wish two more times before he ends Book 9. He emphasizes that she desired only to have her name remembered at the altar, which she had visited without omission of a single day. He then bids his readers to do what she wanted: to remember at the altar Monica along with her husband, Patricius.
While we have the joy of celebrating Saint Monica and Saint Augustine at the altar as saints now in heaven, we realize from their example this need to remember at the altar those who are not known to be saints in heaven. In the Third Eucharistic Prayer, the priest prays, “To our departed brothers and sisters and to all who were pleasing to you at their passing from this life, give kind admittance to your kingdom.” We want all the faithful departed to be in heaven. The Third Eucharistic Prayer continues, “There we hope to enjoy for ever the fullness of your glory through Christ our Lord, through whom you bestow on the world all that is good.” We also want to have heaven’s everlasting glory after we pass from this life. The Eucharist, which is the pledge of future glory, already expresses the union of the Church on earth with the souls in purgatory and the angels and saints in heaven. Christ gave us his own Body and Blood so that we all may know his mercy and be united to him, risen from the dead, forever in heaven.
We will die. In preparing for death, whether we will die during this month dedicated to the faithful departed or a long time from now, we can have Saint Monica’s simple and pure faith in God who raises the dead. And we can tell our loved ones that we have one request for how we want to be remembered: “Remember me at the Lord’s altar.”
