Praying for the Dead: The Role of Intercessory Prayer in Constructing and Maintaining Christian Communities

Abstract

The Catholic Church’s ancient doctrines concerning purgatory and the communion of the saints supported the development in medieval Europe of localised Christian communities which included in their ranks both the living and the dead, and in which the living, through their intercessory prayers, played a central role in assisting the dead to make the transition from purgatory into heaven. While praying for the dead is still a regular feature of the prayer life of Catholic parishes in the modern world, the practice has gradually been drawn into the domain of private prayer, with only limited recognition now being given to the role of the whole community of the faithful in praying for deceased members of the parish. In this paper, I will outline the medieval practices of communal prayer for the dead, and discuss some more recent examples of Catholic groups that have used prosopographical means to reconstruct and maintain a vibrant sense of community which encompasses both the living and the dead. I will ask whether these examples perhaps suggest a largely forgotten but nevertheless potent means by which every faith community within the church might strengthen their bonds of community and help to maintain a flourishing sense of Christian identity within a secularised world.