Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects

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THE CARE TO BE TAKEN FOR THE DEAD Chapter 1 IIOR A LONG TIME I have felt obliged to answer the request of your holiness, venerable fellow bishop, Paulinus, ever since you wrote to me through some of your servants concerning our most devout daughter Flora, asking me whether it is to the advantage of anyone after death to have his body buried near a memorial of some saint. For the above-mentioned widow had made a similar request of you concerning her son who had died in your region, and in your letter of consolation you related that the very thing which with motherly and pious devotion she had requested concerning the faithful youth Cynegius, that his body be buried in the Church of the most blessed Felix the Confessor, had been fulfilled. And on this occasion it happened that you wrote to me through the same bearers of your letters, posing a question of this very nature and insisting that I reply what I thought of the matter, nor did you refrain from stating what you yourself thought. You write that these things do not seem to you to be the idle impulses of the devout faithful caring for 351 352 SAINT AUGUSTINE their dead. You also add that it is of great significance that it is the practice of the universal Church to pray for their dead, and that, accordingly, it can be inferred that it is of advantage to a man after death if by the faith of his relatives such a place is provided for burying his body in which is visible the very aid of the saints which is sought by such method. (2) Since these things are so, you indicate that you do not understand how the statement of the Apostle is not contrary to this belief, when he says: 'For we all shall stand before the tribunal of Christ in order that each one may receive according to the things which he has done in the body, whether good or evil.'1 As a matter of fact, this judgment of the Apostle urges that what can be of profit after death be done before death, not then when what each man has earned before death must be accepted. Yet, this question is thus solved, since by a certain kind of life there is acquired while one lives in the body that these works may bring some aid to the dead, and by reason of this: according to what they have done through the body they are aided by what has been done religiously in their behalf after the body. There are those whom these works aid in no way, whether they are performed in behalf of those whose merits are so evil that they are not worthy to be aided by such deeds or in behalf of those whose merits are so good that they have no need of them. Therefore, by the kind of life which each one has lived through the body it is brought about that whatever is done piously in behalf of a person is of advantage or is not of advantage when he has left the body. For, if there has been accomplished in this life no merit through which these things may be of advantage, in vain is any sought after this life. And so it happens that the Church, through the care relatives take for their dead, I Cf. 2 Cor. 5.10. CARE FOR THE DEAD 353 does not render in vain what religious service it can, yet each one receives according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil, the Lord bestowing on each one according to his work. That what is provided can be of benefit to him after he has left the body has been acquired in the life lived in the body. (3) This short reply of mine could have been a sufficient answer to your request, but I call your attention briefly to some other things involved which I think are worthy of discussion here. We read in the books of the Maccabees that sacrifice is offered for the dead.2 Yet, even if it were read nowhere in the Old Testament, the authority of the universal Church which clearly favors this practice is of great weight, where in the prayers of the priest which are poured forth to the Lord God at...