Today is All Souls’ Day, a feast to commemorate all the faithful departed. The practice of praying for the dead is grounded in Scripture. 2 Machabees 12:46 says, “It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.” Later, in the New Testament, St. Paul the Apostle prays for an apparently deceased man to receive mercy from God (2 Tim. 1:16-18), “The Lord give mercy to the house of Onesiphorus: because he hath often refreshed me, and hath not been ashamed of my chain: But when he was come to Rome, he carefully sought me, and found me.
Christ was almost assuredly a shortening of the way. A way to break away from the purgatory of the wheel of time.