Buried my uncle this week...

He was a great man. He excelled at everything he wanted to excel in: medicine, science, painting, wine-making, fly-fishing, training dogs, and bird-hunting. He loved his wife and family. He never articulated a theological thought to me and seldom attended any kind of church, but he served God's children as a physician with a commitment rarely found in anyone's vocation I have known.

He despised phonies and liked strong and tough people, and unfortunately, most religious people he knew were weak if not phony and foolish. One of his ancestors was a Catholic who participated in some revolutionary activity in Germany. Seeking refuge in a Catholic church, he was kicked out. He moved to Switzerland and became a very reformed Protestant. My uncle was a rationalist and pragmatist who loved nature and considered medicine in the hospital and hunting in the woods to be more holy and sacramental than attending church services. He considered his impiety more sincere than the supposed piety of most religious people, and he probably was right. He lived his convictions better than I live mine.

People such as my uncle are the reason Purgatory makes sense. Purgatory is not as much a punishment as a moment of truth when one feels the light (and heat) of God's presence yet through God's love is perfected and saved. Heat, like water, will either save you or kill you. As one of my favorite Irish priests says, a man who will admit having much to reconcile unto God, "I don't just believe in Purgatory. I'm counting on it!"

I spoke yesterday to a Protestant friend who said there is no reason to mourn a death when the deceased is a Christian. I disagree. We don't know the condition of anyone's soul at death, though with some folks we know very well, we are more confident, if not very confident. I have lost four relatives in ten months: my mother, my nephew, my first cousin, and my uncle. Under the formula generally accepted by Protestant evangelicals for becoming a Christian (accepting Jesus Christ as personal savior for forgiveness of sins through Him alone and the Bible as His revelation), only one, my mother, would be considered a Christian. Does that mean we know the others are without hope of salvation? No. The state of every soul is known to God alone.

When I was an Episcopalian, most Anglican priests preached universalism, that is, God loves us so much that no one is damned. Such a teaching, while emphasizing the truth that God would have died for any one of us, ignores the many Old and New Testament scriptures about eternal judgment and damnation. The parable of the sheep and the goats is not, I believe, just a story to scare us into being good, but an eternal truth. The Catholic teaching on Purgatory, however, makes universal salvation logical, though at a price not just of Christ on the Cross, but of the prayers and sufferings of the entire communion of saints. Those of us living join in prayer with those who are raised to eternal life, united in the Son of God, to form the bridge of love by which those who are dead might be perfected and come face to face with God Almighty.

But there are other reasons to mourn. I grieve the loss of a caring person who taught me many things my parents could not. I grieve the loss of his stories and memories of growing up in central Pennsylvania, attending Princeton and Johns Hopkins, hunting, fishing, rearing children, arguing with his in-laws (my mother's family), and treating cancers, infertility, etc. He was, I realize, my closest uncle. I entrust his soul to a loving God. The humility he demonstrated in his life will not likely desert him in death. I miss him. Requiescat in pace.