The mysterious nexus of praying for the dead

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.