The Perspective of Justice

We Pray For Them All

We have a wonderful tradition in Christianity of praying for the souls of all the dead. Notice that we pray for all the dead: “strengthen our hope that all our departed brothers and sisters will share in his resurrection.” We don’t separate the rich from the poor, or the black from the white, or the male from the female; we don’t leave out those who were criminals or had AIDS or were illiterate; we don’t give special prayer privilege to the powerful or the intellectual or the ecclesiastical.

This is All Souls Day. We pray for them all. We wish them all eternal life.
What will it take for us to create a world in which we treat the living with as much respect and equality as we treat the dead? Why can’t we find a way to be as tolerant of souls living in bodies as we are of disembodied souls?

God, who has fatherly concern for everyone, has willed that all men should constitute one family and treat one another in a spirit of brotherhood. For having been created in the image of God, “who from one man has created the whole human race and made them live all over the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26), all men are called to one and the same goal, namely, God Himself.

Vatican II, Constitution on the Church
in the Modern World (1965) 24

Gerald Darring

*From Saint Louis University