Dear Departed

Today is the first anniversary of mother's death. We thank God for her life and pray for the repose of her soul.

Praying for the Dead

Christians from the earliest centuries of the Church have expressed their communion with those who have died by praying for the dead.

Inscriptions in the Roman catacombs indicate that the early Christians honored and prayed for their deceased relatives and friends.

Tertullian (211)
Wrote that Christians offered prayer and the Eucharist for the deceased on the anniversaries of their death.

St. Augustine (354 - 430)
Neither are the souls of the pious dead separated from the Church, which even now is the Kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be no remembrance of them at the altar of God in the communication of the Body of Christ.

Rom 6:3-4
Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.

Col 2:12
You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

The early Christians, in praying for their dead were expressing their belief that departed brothers and sisters underwent a purification after death ("purgatory"). Their prayers were prayers that God would have mercy on them during this time of healing and purification.