In 2014, New York City firefighter Matthew Byrne, after years of suffering from substance abuse and depression following PTSD, took his own life. Matthew and I grew up in the same town and went to the same Catholic grammar school, though he was a grade ahead of me. Other than a year together on the same basketball team, which his dad coached, I never had any interactions with him. I did continue to run into his father, Ed, to whom I have long been connected by multiple degrees of separation.
I last saw Ed at Matthew’s funeral eleven years ago. So it was with great surprise that I recently received a package from him. He sent me his two books, his novel about the generational clash between a father and son, and his memoir about Matthew’s life and passing. The latter carries what Ed calls a “slightly ironic title”: In Whom I Am Well Pleased. On the front cover is a photograph of Matthew—smiling, strong, handsome, clad in a tie and a white shirt. I have been reading the memoir at night; it has been on the top of my nightstand for three weeks now. Multiple times a day, I look at Matthew’s image on the book cover.
I have repeatedly asked myself: “Why did he send me these books?” As the calendar flipped to November, I surmised an answer: in His strange Providence, God wants my prayers for Matthew. Indeed, as I have looked at his image, I have prayed for him. As I have read about his life, I have come to know him. My prayers have increased. I have arranged for a Mass to be offered for his repose at my parish. I hope that, in the mercy of God, these efforts may bring Matthew to eternal life.
Praying for the dead rests on sound doctrine and on the practice of Christians from the beginning. “God created us without us: but He did not will to save us without us,” said St. Augustine. Salvation is a gift of God wrought by Christ’s self-sacrifice on the cross. Yet God willed His children to help Him dispense this gift. We dispense it to the living through evangelization—“faith comes by hearing” (Rom 10:17)—and to the dead through prayers and Masses.
St. Augustine wrote in his On the Care of the Dead that “prayers for the souls of the dead must not be omitted. The Church has undertaken these prayers that must be made for all the dead in our Christian and Catholic community, even without mentioning their names, in a general commemoration. … Let us not think that anything reaches the dead for whom we offer care except what we solemnly entreat by our sacrifices, whether of the altar, prayers, or almsgiving. However, these prayers do not benefit all those for whom they are offered, but only those who were prepared while living. But since we cannot know who these prepared ones are, we must undertake these actions for all the baptized so that we do not pass over anyone to whom these benefits are directed and ought to reach” (Capita VI, XVIII).
Save the saints in Heaven, none of us knows the status of a single one of the departed. Augustine exhorts us to offer prayers and sacrifices for them regardless. These prayers are among the greatest leaps of faith: we entrust our efforts to God without knowing where they go or what specific good they will do, and their outcome will elude us on this side of eternity.
The difference makers could be our prayers—or those of the saints. Augustine, in the same text, asserted that there is one value in burying the dead in a cemetery named for a saint: that saint may pray for them. Sometimes a saint can serve as a bridge between this life and the next. St. John Vianney once told a grieving widow that her irreligious husband, who committed suicide by jumping off a bridge, repented as he fell; he was in Purgatory, thanks to the Blessed Mother’s intercession.
We also do not know how many prayers should be offered or for how long. St. Faustina relates in her diary stories of her fellow sisters who, after their deaths, appeared to her from Purgatory days or months after their deaths. After these appearances, Sister Faustina doubled her efforts for them; in some cases, her prayers initially heightened the deceased’s torments and then brought relief. Princess Constance, daughter of St. Elizabeth of Portugal, appeared to her father with the message that she would spend many years in Purgatory unless a Mass were said for her every day for a year. This was done, and after a year, Constance appeared to her mother in a white robe about to enter Heaven.
Pope Benedict XVI explained in Spe Salvi why our prayers intercede between the deceased soul and God:
No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: in what I think, say, do, and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person, something external, not even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other—my prayer for him—can play a small part in his purification. (48)
To play a small part in a soul’s purification is among the highest honors of a Christian. Connected as we are to Christ’s body through baptism, our prayers meet in a mysterious nexus that God governs. We cannot know the day, the hour, or necessarily even the person, but Christ has promised that our prayers will work. As November draws to a close, let us pray for the dead—those whom we know and those whom we do not—and trust that God will bring them home to Him as a result of our faithful efforts. You could start by praying for Matthew Byrne—perhaps God has woven his salvation into your prayer as well.
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Several years ago, during November, while walking through a local cemetery, I noticed a headstone that really affected me. The young man buried there, Benny, had been born only a few months before me in 1953 but had died about two weeks short of his 19th birthday, way back in 1972. Though I’d never known of his existence before that moment, he and I had, in a certain sense, grown up together: we would have started school the same year, heard the same music on the radio, might have watched the same television shows at the same time; if he was Catholic, we probably would have been baptized, received our first Holy Communion, and been confirmed in the same year. Yet there I was, standing at a grave that he’d been lying in for 50 years. The effect on me was profound. Could the Holy Spirit, I wondered, have led me to that grave because somewhere in the eternal realm, Benny had arrived at a place where intercession could do him the most good? Since then, I’ve prayed for the repose of his soul. Perhaps he no longer needs it; if not, I’m sure God will know what to do with my prayers.
I sure do miss the Church reminding us, urging us, to pray for the most abandoned soul in Purgatory.
I still do on my own, but not often do I hear a priest mention this work of mercy.
What a bunch of dumbbells…
Eamon Duffy (in his The Stripping of the Altars) says that of all the blows suffered by English Catholics after Henry VIII, the prohibition of prayers for the dead in the new religion was the most upsetting and grieved English hearts for a couple of generations.
A couple months ago our priest gave a sermon on purgatory. On the way out I told him that was the sermon I wanted at my funeral if he was the celebrant, not any eulogies!
About praying for the dead, and about at least beginning to believe and understand the conjunction of time and eternity…we do have a prayer.
Two thoughts:
FIRST, competent theologians enlighten us that when we pray for the dead, our prayers can be heard not when we say them, but when the beneficiary needs or needed (!) them. Needed, as in time even years before the prayers pass our finite lips. The eternal God is not the prisoner of time…
Bonagura mentions St. Faustina, and the Cure of Ars who consoled a grieving widow about her suicidal jump from a bridge six months earlier. Was it the widow’s later prayers that helped to convert the husband at that earlier moment just before he hit the water?
St. Faustina has a gifted insight about that sort of conjunction:
“I often attend upon the dying and through entreaties obtain for them trust in God’s mercy, and I implore God for an abundance of divine grace, which is always victorious. God’s mercy sometimes touches the sinner at the last moment [responding to our later prayers?] in a wondrous and mysterious way. Outwardly it seems as though everything were lost, but it is not so. The soul, illumined by a ray of God’s powerful final grace, turns to God in the last moment with such a power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God forgiveness of sin and punishment, while outwardly it shows no sign either of repentance or of contrition, because souls [ed. at that moment] no longer react to external things. Oh, how beyond comprehension is God’s mercy!” (Diary, n 1698/p. 601).
SECOND, Faustina does go on to say that the sinner is still free to accept the moment of final grace, or not.
But, again and within the Communion of Saints, prayer does make a difference. Hope for others who have passed is a theological virtue, not a calculation. The insightful novelist Georges Bernanos gives us a further hint: “…I don’t suppose if God had given us the clear knowledge of how closely we are bound to one another both in good and evil, that we could go on living…” (“The Diary of a Country Priest”).
Bound together, as in prayers for the dead.
My great uncle returned from WWII with a severe case of “shell shock”. As a child we knew him to be different, unusual not necessarily in a comfortable way, though not a bad man, just highly disturbed beyond the reach of our family. He also committed suicide in the late 50s at which time our priest denied him a rosary and funeral mass. My father petition to the Bishop was rejected. My faith rests in the hope that God is more gracious, merciful and just than either of these two men.
AFCz;
We are told that suicide is a mortal sin, but I have always told myself that if one has committed suicide, he is given the chance to repent. I have not only told myself that, I comfort myself with that, because a few of my friends have indeed done that. Why? – IMO one who does such a thing is not in his right mind. To me that makes sense.
IMO the Priest who denied him the funeral Mass and Rosary and the Bishop who denied the petition were WRONG.
Our understanding of emotional & mental suffering has changed since then. Praise God. And we can’t know whether in their final moments, even nanoseconds someone made peace with God & asked forgiveness. I pray that we may each have that opportunity, especially for those unprepared with the Sacraments.
God bless your great uncle’s soul. May he rest in peace.
Always pass on as you’re walking out of the confessional…. (if you can arrange that)
Of course we pray for the dead – we are taught this as children. We have Masses offered for them, we celebrate All Saints’ Day, we have funerals for them, and we hope and pray that those left behind do the same for us when we join them.
May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.
Idea – have a Mass offered for the most forgotten soul in purgatory.
Thank you for a very thoughtful article on the need to pray for those who are no longer with us.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Time vanishes as a determination after death because God, who knows all past and future does not live and act in time.
Judas Maccabeus, after recovering his dead warriors following a battle, discovered all were wearing an idolatrous talisman. Forbidden and worthy of condemnation. Nevertheless, Judas arranged a collection from his army for donations to be sent to the Jerusalem Temple for prayers of intercession. That they be forgiven their grave sins of idolatry.
God perceives all.
Whether the dead merited intercession as Augustine said, “these prayers do not benefit all those for whom they are offered, but only those who were prepared while living” – that merit, on the effect of the many Masses, prayers, sacrifices offered after death might be gained at judgment.
If such were possible, the will of the deceased would require ‘a change of heart’ so to speak at the moment of death prior to judgment.
We’ve traditionally understood then prayers for the dead to succor, gain release from souls in Purgatory.
Judas Maccabeus and prayers for those who presumably died in their sins warranting condemnation addresses another worthy consideration for our intercessory actions. That would be grace revealing knowledge of the depth and sweetness of God’s love, offering the person on the precipice of death and condemnation a final choice.
Whenever I hear that someone has died, whether on broadcast news, online, or someone tells me, I pray for them at that moment. The same whenever the name of someone who has died comes to mind. Perhaps the reason I’m hearing about their death or they come to mind is so I can pray for them. I don’t know. But I know it can’t hurt and can do much good.
Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.
I pray for my deceased wife every day while listening to The Devine Mercy Chaplet and looking at a photo album with 50 pictures of her covering the 62+years of our marriage. I do it with three intentions- thanksgiving for who she was and what she did, as a token of my sorrow for any sins I committed against her, and as a prayer for her soul if it can help her in any way. I also ask the angles and saints to pray with me.
I’m so sorry for your loss Mr. James.
I was watching Robert Marshall’s testimony about dying and meeting Jesus. He asked Him if he could return to comfort his wife. The eventual answer was that He sends help to those left behind. It’s called 44 hours in heaven with many interviews for free on the web, and there’s also a book.