October 27, 2024
Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord… and let perpetual light shine upon them.
Not long ago, this call-and-response prayer was on the tip of every Catholic tongue. Now, in certain settings, the response is crickets. This reality does not stop at disappointing, it is concerning. This lack of participatory knowledge suggests a wider issue – that individuals and families are no longer taking much time to pray for the deceased members of their family, community, and world. When the response to your favorite sports team’s cheer is better known than a simple prayer for the dead, there might be a problem.
Many of our Protestant sisters and brothers will quickly point out their belief that there is no need to pray for the dead. They say that prayers for the dead are at least borderline superstition and idolatry, if not fully blasphemous. We will return to the effectiveness of these prayers in a moment; for now, I want to focus on the general lack of these prayers being offered. If most Christians, and many Catholic Christians, are not praying such prayers, the simple question becomes who is? The answer, it would seem, is nearly no one. This lack of prayer is all the more reason for those who believe to pray for the dead considering how few fulfill this practice held from the earliest days of the Church. This returns us to the effectiveness of these prayers, and rightly so, because if they are not effective, why bother to pray them?
To arrive at an understanding of the effectiveness of these prayers one must start with God. God, as we well know, is outside of time. Jesus Christ, the son of God, God-made-man, existed for a time within time, thanks to the Incarnation. Jesus may still be experiencing time in a similar way due to the Incarnation and Ascension – but that’s another topic. The point is that God the Father is not, has not, nor will He ever be constrained by the limits of time – God is always. With God perfectly experiencing each and every moment God thus hears (receives) your prayers for your mom when you are a little child just the same as God receives your prayers for your mom in the last moments of your life, well after your mom has made a similar journey. In this way, God receives those prayers in the eternal now and God can, and I believe He so chooses, to apply those prayers however He wills. Therefore, how fitting it is that God present all of those prayers at the moment of your mom’s death, the moment which Catholics refer to as the particular judgment. How wonderful it must be to receive the prayers of an unknown grandson, or great-grandson, like little love notes presented to you, by God, on behalf of the entire Church family. These prayers are available to everyone, not just those we know and love who happen to be close to us. Hear of a tragedy on the news; pray for the injured and deceased. Pass a cemetery; pray for those dead. Encounter a funeral procession; pray for that individual. Hear or see emergency first responders; pray for their safety and for the good of those to whom they go. In the coming month, we pray especially for the souls in purgatory and our dearly departed. Join me in praying for the dead. It’s an act of mercy. Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord…
Two Parishes, One Heart,
Fr. Adam Carrico