Prayers for the Dead
Last Thursday night at Our Lady of Lourdes, we had a truly beautiful Mass for the bereaved. The whole community came together to offer prayers for those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith (1 Thess. 4:13, 14). Of course "Mass is the highest form of prayer we can say", to quote Pope Pius X. It is the whole of salvation history acted out for us, and in which we partake, audibly in prayer and joining in with the hymns, spiritually through our attention during the liturgy of the Word and the private prayers of our heart we make at the liturgy of the Eucharist, and silently through our actions, our demeanour and the little acts of love we make during Mass to show God how much we care: genuflections, anointing ourselves with the sign of the Cross, etc. For some Mass goers today, the Bible is something unfamiliar and sadly, not an every day part of their faith. I wonder then, whether many would recognise the extent to which the Mass is soaked in Sacred Scr...