Do You Pray for the Dead?

One of the things you often hear from people is that the news is so sad. Doesn't matter their political persuasion; doesn't matter their taste in music or movies; doesn't matter where they're from.

The news is enough to depress the hardiest soul.

Now, some of that is the nature of the medium itself. People in entertainment know that in order to keep eyes on screens, what's on the screen needs to compel your attention. It needs to be hard to look away from. So actors tend to either be awe-inspiringly beautiful, or eye-catchingly otherwise. Spectacle is important, and often used to the exclusion of story or anything else.

So some of the daily darkness of the news is the result of commercial calculation.

But some is simply the result of living at the end of an age, a hinge moment in history, the prelude to the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart.

So what do we do, we who believe, in the face of darkness, death, and destruction? What do we do in the face of tragedy and loss?

Well, we pray, or at least we ought to. When we see the dead on the screen, the celebrities and the unnamed victims of war, disease, and disaster; when we see the body bags and the body counts from the latest school shooting; when we're confronted once again with a disaster, we should be praying.

And we should be praying for everyone involved. We don't get the easy way out of saying, "Oh, those poor victims! I'll pray for them. But I can't possibly pray for those monsters who did this to them!"

Nor do we have the luxury of praying for "our" politicians, for "our" side to win, and never offering a prayer for our enemies. Oh, our prayers may be for their conversion, for them to change their minds, but we must always be wishing them well, praying for their good. We must always be loving them, because they are our brethren, our family. The whole of humanity are brethren to us, are family to us. Some are closer than others, true; some must be opposed in order to defend the defenseless, true; but all are one in Adam, if not in Christ. And all are to be loved, according to the Gospel (see Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27-36).

And so we should pray, especially the Divine Mercy Chaplet, "for mercy on us, and on the whole world." We should adore the Eucharistic Lord on behalf of all, especially on behalf of those who "do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love" Him. We should live Fatima and Divine Mercy, praying for those most in need of God's mercy, and so seeking to save as many (or all) from hell, if our prayers and God's grace will make it so.

Pray for everyone. Pray for all the situations. We're given infinite power in the Mass, in the Rosary, in the Divine Mercy Chaplet. If we don't use it, many people will be the poorer.

Love! Pray!