Praying for our deceased brethren

On 8 November, the Dominicans commemorate our deceased brothers and sisters in the Order, those who, having completed the tasks of this life, have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. This year, the friars from Oxford visited Wolvercote cemetery where they prayed and blessed the graves of their brothers buried there.

The following is a reading from the Dominican Proper, which may be read on this day during Matins. It is by fr. Pierre André Liégé OP:

"Our faith in the sacrifice and death of Christ proclaims this event as the fountain and gate of all things which, in our life, take the form of sacrifice and renunciation. For does not the Living God, through the cross of Jesus, reveal a God who turns death, as well as the other evils and calamities in our life, into a living hope? Did not Jesus in his own sacrifice fully restore the relationships of humanity to God by accepting the ultimate spiritual agony?

To die together with Christ is to be bound over to the following of him, eagerly persisting in this very hope and in spiritual combat. Indeed, through spiritual combat we are freed together with Christ when for the love of God and of one another we expend ourselves, no matter what the cost, in opposing whatever falsehood or injustice, danger or violence, hatred or the plotting of the powerful, or fear that may stand in the way. In hope, however, we are bound over to Christ when from the depths of our death, or of our own hopelessness of weaknesses, or of the unbelief or hopelessness of others — all those things utterly blameworthy in our life — we entrust ourselves completely to the care of the Living God."