Nov 2 Thu
Challenge: Should I pray for the dead? Isn’t it unbiblical?
– The practice is not just Catholic, it is biblical.
First, it isn’t only Catholics who pray for the dead, many others also do. Further, prayer for the dead has been practiced by Jews since before the time of Christ and continues to be practiced by them today.
In Scripture, Judah Maccabee and his men were retrieving the bodies of fallen comrades when they discovered that some who had fallen were wearing pagan amulets, and so “they turned to prayer, praying that the sin which had been committed might be wholly blotted out” (2 Macc. 12:42). This gives evidence of prayer for the dead among Jews, before the time of Christ; and Jews continue to pray for the dead today, particularly using a prayer known as the Mourner’s Kaddish.
The New Testament also contains a plausible instance of prayer for the dead. After praying for the household of a man named Onesiphorus, Paul goes on to pray “may the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that Day” (2 Tim. 1:18). Paul twice mentions “the household of Onesiphorus” (2 Tim. 1:16, 4:19), but does not greet him with the rest of his household and speaks of him only in the past tense. Many scholars have concluded that Onesiphorus had passed away, and thus Paul was praying for the departed.
The Protestant apologist C.S. Lewis writes: “Of course I pray for the dead! The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me… At our age, the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of interaction with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to Him?” (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, 107).
It is a natural human impulse to pray for our loved ones, even when they have passed from this life. Prayer for the souls in purgatory is a duty of charity; and in many cases, also one of justice.
The most valuable suffrage we can offer is the holy sacrifice of the Mass. The Mass can be applied for the deceased to satisfy for the temporal punishment due to their sins. With a mother's love, the Church has also established that the faithful can gain indulgences that are applicable to the deceased. These indulgences flow from the treasury of graces formed by the merits of Christ, our Lady and the saints.
Personal penance, offered as expiation for sins, can also be offered for the deceased. Our hope that God will heed our prayers, our suffrages, and our penance on behalf of the souls in purgatory stems from the certainty that all who are united to Christ form a single Body in Him.
We ask our Lady, Gate of Paradise, to open the gates of heaven for those who have left us, and that some day we may all be reunited there forever.
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