Why should we pray for the dead? Fr. Rolheiser writes that we need to pray because it does us good. We pray for the dead because that prayer helps us, the living. Prayer for the dead is meant to console the living. We pray for our dead loved ones to help heal our relationship with them. When someone close to us dies, it is natural, always, to feel a certain amount of guilt, not just because that person died and we go on living, but because, being human, we have had a less-than-perfect relationship with him or her. There is unfinished business between us. In praying for that person, among other things, we help wash clean those things that remain painful between us. We pray for the dead because we believe in the communion of saints, an essential Christian doctrine that asks us to believe that a vital flow of life continues to exist between ourselves and our loved ones, even beyond death. Love, presence, and communication reach through death. We pray for the dead to remain in communication with them. Just as we can hold someone’s hand as he or she is dying, and this can be an immense comfort to both of us, so too we can hold another’s hand beyond death. Communication with our loved ones after death is privileged, undercutting much of what kept us apart in this life. Praying for the dead, our faith assures us, not only consoles us but also offers real strength and encouragement to the loved one who has died. From my own experience of having loved ones die, as well as from what others have shared with me, I have found that usually, after a time, we sense that our deceased loved ones no longer need us to pray for them. Now they just want us to connect with them. Prayer for the dead does that and even though our prayers might still be formulated as if we are praying for them we are now simply connecting with them and what was formerly a cold, cutting absence now becomes a warm, comforting presence.