Prayers for the dead

[rocksizedheart]

In the Mass, we pray for those who have already met their deaths. In the traditions that I grew up in, there was very little emphasis on this. How can I tell you, though...it gives me some peace to know that there are those prayers every time the Mass is said. Sometimes, you do not know your friends have died. It is some peace knowing, at the very least, on Sunday you held some prayer in your heart, some reflection for those you have known who died.

A friend of mine, a girl I knew from high school, died a little over a week ago, and I just heard it this morning. We were not particularly close, but then again, I wasn't close to many people from high school. I saw her last in March, when I was home. I ran into her in the grocery store, and she told me her cancer had returned. She had been through two ordeals with it, and posted on Facebook recently enough that I thought she was winning this fight as well.

Mindy was a girl who could always smile, who could always put up a brave front. She was someone who must have always known, more than the ordinary person, that death is always beside us, but I never knew her to show fear. I think, that if in my life, I have ever met a saint, it was her.

We must remember to treat everyone with compassion, because we do not know what they suffer in their lives or in their bodies.