mkw:
don’t the Mormons practice “Baptism for the Dead”?
Of course! And they use this passage + some references to 1-2nd century practices by heretics or misinformed.
St Francis DeSales uses this against those who deny Purgatory And connects it to the OT Maccabees which a Prot. or Mormon cannot do:
Sounds like:
2Maccabees: For
if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it
would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead.
**St Frances de Sales: **
This passage properly understood evidently shows that it was the custom of the primitive Church to watch, pray, fast, for the souls of the departed (do penance on their behalf.). For, firstly, in the Scriptures to be baptized is often taken for afflictions, punishments and penances ; as in S. Luke, chap xii., where Our Lord speaking of his Passion says:
I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!-and in S. Mark. chap x., he says :
Can you drink of the chalice that I drink of; or be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am baptized? -in which places Our Lord calls pains and afflictions baptism. This then is the sense of that Scripture:** if the dead rise not again, what is the use of mortifying and afflicting oneself, of praying and fasting for the dead? **And indeed this sentence of S. Paul resembles that of Maccabees quoted above:
It is superfluous and vain to pray for the dead if the dead rise not again. They may twist and transform this text with as many interpretations as they like, and there will be none to properly fit into the Holy Letter except this.
I like St Francis’ interpretation the best.
AND he’s a DOCTOR of the Church
Don’t know…but it sure as hell beats down the Mormon approach…the Mormons believe a person on earth can be baptized for someone who has died and they can go onto becoming Gods as they believe.