When we demand that every last little thing be calibrated to our aesthetic liking, we run the risk of worshipping aesthetics, rather than the Lord they’re meant to honor. So, yes, make adjustments when necessary. If a better translation is available, by all means use it! But don’t be such a precious butterfly that you simply can’t abide to alight on something that tickles you this way instead of that way. Keep on fluttering, and you’ll never get to the nectar.
Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Yes, of course we should pray for all departed souls, because we can’t know which ones were “faithful!”. Obviously we can’t make that judgement. We should especially pray for people (alive or dead) that seem not faithful. It doesn’t matter if they worshipped Satan, killed in cold blood, committed suicide, whatever. God doesn’t work in time.
Out present prayers may help them retroactively. However, once they are “departed,” God has already made that judgement; hence, the very precise wording of generic prayers for the “faithful departed” taught by the Church. The faithless, whatever and whoever that means, known only to God alone, simply can’t be prayed for. That’s all. Sorry to split hairs. I guess it’s like a mini lex orandi lex credendi hang up? 😀 (That should be a sheepish face there.)
Well I believe the Church teaches us to pray for the “faithful departed” because those are the only souls that can be helped by prayer after their death (in Purgatory). Those condemned to Hell cannot be helped by prayer any longer. Immediately upon their death, God deems which ones (regardless of their outward appearance or religion) were in fact “faithful” and may be in need of prayers to lessen their suffering in Purgatory. “Faithful” does not necessarily mean what would outeardly appear Catholic-in-state-of-grace, but insofar as others formally outside the Catholic Church may be saved by God’s mercy, they participate in the Catholic Faith, knowingly or not. And God knows who they are and applies our prayers.
True dat.
But praying for all souls also makes sense as the New Testament teaches us that we are allowed to hope that *ALL* might be saved.
It also saves two syllables.
And I’m not sure how I wrote “near perfection” about my house in the thing I wrote below. I guess I was trying to say that I was obsessed with getting it to near perfection. It was an exercise in futility.
I try to pray the Divine Mercy prayers every day at 3:00 PM.
Yeah, I keep hoping for perfectsville in this life, but it’s a temptation. I revel in a clean house, but know that all of the reasons in the past that kept it from near perfection were more worthy distractions.
The Divine Mercy novena was something Jesus asked Faustina to do, not the general public. I’ll take that as my loophole to just wing it and say the chaplet when I can’t sleep at 4 am. The Chaplet and the rosary have saved me from being a moth that tries to solve problems by endlessly beating it’s head on a light bulb. Sometimes my husband joins me, if we’re both worried and both can’t sleep. There is a sense of peace that comes.
My husband rebelled the other day from the prayer: “May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God, rest in peace.” We’ve said that prayer for decades, but one day he got his dander up and said, “No!–I’m going to pray for ALL departed souls. Period.” I didn’t have to argue the point, I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me. Now we pray, “May the souls of ALL departed, rest in peace.”
Every year (most years) we say the chaplet of mercy on our knees at 3 pm on Good Friday. The old set of kids have moved on and a new one has come up the ranks. Nobody complained this year. (Miraculous!) For my little physics buff, I say, “I know, I know, it’s not 3 pm everywhere, and it’s not 3 pm in Hawaii yet, but it’s a continuous outpouring of grace, and when it’s our turn, we step up and join the choir! That works for him.
This was a timely article for me, especially this week when I am being sent where I don’t want to go, to do what I don’t want to do but have to, with no time to do it properly, etc., along with the thousand other things I have to do. I am “OCD” enough to care what the finished product of everything I do looks like, and it’s killing me. You made me think. Thank you…..so off I go into the abyss of my life, chuckling and shaking my head, begging Divine Mercy, with great hope in my heart that I will eventually hear Jesus say, “it’s ok, at least you sort of got there.”