Our Faithful Departed: Where They Are and Why It Matters
About this ebook
When someone we love dies, it’s difficult to look beyond our grief to understand that they are still with us.
And yet we hear in the funeral liturgy that “life is changed not ended.” In Our Faithful Departed, University of Notre Dame theologian Leonard J. DeLorenzo shows us what this means and how we are called to remain faithful in our relationships with the dead.
“Those whom we have known and loved in this life we have only known and loved partially, imperfectly,” DeLorenzo writes. “In heaven, what has been partial shall be made complete, and what has been imperfect shall be perfected.”
He explains that the Catholic Church teaches that heaven is not so much a place as it is a perfect communion in Christ where the living and the dead are forever united.
In this book, you will learn that:
- St. Teresa of Calcutta thought of her own life as a practice for heaven;
- the Eucharist is a prayer for the dead, an offering brought to the altar;
- Día de los Muertos is an understanding that death is not the opposite of life, but part of it;
- Christ wants us to broaden and deepen our notions of the body;
- we can practice communion with the dead by praying for them, remembering them by name during the Mass, sharing memories of them, and celebrating them in devotional practices.
DeLorenzo relates his own story of the loss of his grandparents and shares heartwarming experiences from other Catholics—including Laura Kelly Fanucci, Stephanie DePrez, and John Cavadini—who have felt the connection with their lost friends and loved ones.
DeLorenzo said that the Church must encourage communion with the dead through public acts such as Eucharistic processions, prayer, monthly adoration with prayers for the souls in purgatory, and by accompanying the grieving with tenderness and compassion.
About the author
Leonard J. DeLorenzo has worked at the McGrath Institute for Church Life since 2003 and teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is an award-winning author who has written or edited eleven books, including Witness and What Matters Most.Through the McGrath Institute, DeLorenzo is developing the Sullivan Family Saints Initiative, devoted to fostering scholarship on, and devotion to, the saints. He also launched, produces, and hosts Church Life Today––a popular radio show and podcast. In addition to writing books, articles, and essays, he speaks regularly in academic and pastoral settings on the saints, biblical catechesis, vocation and discernment, and the theological imagination, among other topics.DeLorenzo and his wife, Lisa, live in South Bend, Indiana, with their children.
The McGrath Institute for Church Life was founded as the Center for Pastoral and Social Ministry by the late Notre Dame president Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, CSC, in 1976. The McGrath Institute partners with Catholic dioceses, parishes, and schools to provide theological education and formation to address pressing pastoral problems. The Institute connects the Catholic intellectual tradition to the pastoral life of the Church in forming faithful Catholic leaders for service to the Church and the world. The McGrath Institute strives to be the preeminent source of creative Catholic content and programming for the new evangelization in the United States.
John C. Cavadini is the McGrath-Cavadini Director of the Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. A member of Notre Dame’s department of theology, Cavadini served as chair of the department from 1997 to 2010, during which he led the department to a top-ten ranking in the National Research Council rankings of doctoral programs. He is an expert in patristic and early medieval theology, with a special focus on the theology of St. Augustine. In November 2009 he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to a five-year term on the International Theological Commission.
