The topic I was asked to speak on was the communion of saints in this world and in the next,

which means I'm going to talk about two kinds of topics.

I'm going to talk first a bit about communion,

then I'm going to talk a bit about the difference between this world and the next,

the crucial point of which is death,

and then I'm going to talk a bit about the impact of death on our relation

with the saints who've gone ahead of us, so to speak.

The relationship between the church militant, on the one hand, that is the church still

in this world, and the church suffering and triumphant, the church in purgatory and in heaven

on the other side.

That's what I'll be talking about.

So my presentation.

Alfred North Whitehead, an early 20th century philosopher, at least at one time rather vigorously

studied at Yale, but I think not so much anymore, defined religion as, quote, what the

individual does with his own solitariness.

William James, two years earlier, had defined religion this way.

It is the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude,

so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.

A great book on Sufi mysticism, The Mid-20th Century by Henry Corbin has the title, Alone with the Alone.

This kind of early 20th century, mid-20th century, perhaps highly individualistic, to begin with

a deracinated view, tends to see religion as what you do with your solitariness.

Historically, that seems to me utterly false.

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