As November sucks the color from the landscape and wind stirs the crackling leaves of the graveyards into little flurries, I stand under swaying pine branches, surrounded by headstones, and offer a few prayers. The cemetery is wrapped in a sacred stillness and silence, the kind of silence that surrounds mysteries too deep for words.
For members of the Catholic Church, November is dedicated to praying for the souls who have died in the friendship of God but still require purification before entering His presence.
Remembering the dead is not solely a religious value. Although Veteran’s Day in America is observed to honor living veterans who fought for our country, many also use November as a time to remember those who have died fighting for our country. We understand that we owe remembrance and reverence to those who have given their lives for the service of their fellow Americans.
In ancient times, the Romans celebrated a nine-day festival called the “Parentalia,” during which they remembered and honored their ancestors. They offered wheat, salt, wine-soaked bread, and flowers to the “shades of the dead.” In Homer’s epic “The Iliad,” the Greeks recognize the solemn duty to bury and mourn the deceased. Respect for the dead is part of the natural, universal law of human civilization, and most cultures have recognized that the dead live on in some form.
In addition to imitating the wisdom of the ancients, there are other benefits that flow from remembering the dead. In the first place, we can learn from those who came before us. By honoring traditions, we honor what our ancestors bequeathed to us. By remembering them, we remember also what they suffered and built for our sakes. Tradition consists of this accumulation of wisdom, memory, values, and lore that builds from generation to generation. As Chesterton famously wrote in his book “Orthodoxy”: “Tradition is the democracy of the dead. It means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes: our ancestors.”
It should be obvious that a modern progressive mindset is antithetical to respect for tradition. Many progressives are accustomed to treating their ancestors as primitive ignoramuses to be forgotten and their cherished beliefs as mere outmoded theories to be superseded by our superior scientific understanding and our enlightened morals.
True, the deceased didn’t get everything right in life. But to dispense with everything our ancestors built over the course of thousands of years takes a colossal ego. Are we sure that our limited perspective and experience outweigh the combined experience of the dead? Remembering the dead forces us to slow down and recall the tragedies and triumphs of our ancestors’ stories, which are a part of our own story, whether we like it or not. Such remembrance might just instill a little humility in us.
When we honor the dead, we are also reminded of our own mortality in a healthy way. Recalling all those who have passed before us reminds us that we, too, will die one day. “Just as are the generations of leaves, such are those also of men,” Homer wrote. “As for the leaves, the wind scatters some on the earth, but the luxuriant forest sprouts others when the season of spring has come; so of men one generation springs up and another passes away.”
We’re part of a bigger story than our own, and what may seem to our generation like mighty achievements is like dead leaves to future generations. This thought imprints on our minds the footprints of the eternal and thus the serious importance of living well and of building good things that will withstand the onslaught of time.
Those, at least, are the reflections stirred up in me as I stand beside these graves. The mourning wind – the only sound in the quiet graveyard – murmurs about another world, reminding me of the transience of this one. I don’t find it a depressing thought; rather, it lends greater purpose and focus to my life, however much of it remains.
This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.
Image credit: Pexels
