Wisdom from Jeremy Taylor: "hearty and constant prayer" for the departed

Words from Jeremy Taylor, suitable to November, on our duties to the dead, including "hearty and constant prayer" for them in light of the advent of "the fearful and yet much to be desired day", after the example of St. Paul's intercession for Onesiphorus.

But then we should do well also to remember, that in this world we are something besides flesh and blood; that we may not, without violent necessities, run into new relations, but preserve the affections we bore to our dead when they were alive: we must not so live as if they were perished, but so as pressing forward to the most intimate participation of the communion of saints. And we also have some ways to express this relation , and to bear a part in this communion, by actions of intercourse with them, and yet proper to our state: such as are strictly performing the will of the dead, providing for, and tenderly and wisely educating their children, paying their debts, imitating their good example, preserving their memories privately, and publicly keeping their memorials, and desiring of God, with hearty and constant prayer, that God would give them a joyful resurrection, and a merciful judgment - for so St. Paul prayed in behalf of Onesiphorus; that "God would show them mercy in that day"; that fearful, and yet much to be desired day, in which the most righteous person hath need of much mercy and pity, and shall find it.

From Taylor's 'A Funeral Sermon', Part II, in The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, Volume IV.

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