I used to think that once my grandmother died, her praying for us was over. Whatever she’d carried to God on our behalf for all those years, the grandkids she never stopped mentioning by name, just stopped when she did. It felt obvious. She was gone. The praying had to be too.

I don’t think that anymore, and it isn’t sentiment that changed my mind, it’s what the Church actually teaches. The Catechism says our prayer for the dead doesn’t only help them. It also helps make their intercession for us effective. That’s a strange thing to sit with. It means the praying runs both directions, that when I pray for my grandmother, I’m not just hoping she’s at peace, I’m also, somehow, keeping something alive between us that she can still use on my behalf.

This week I’ve been thinking about grandparents as witnesses, people who prayed for a family they’d only partly see grow up. What I’d missed is that the witness doesn’t end at the grave. It changes shape. She isn’t watching from a photograph anymore. She’s praying from somewhere I can’t see, for people she loved before I was anyone to anybody.

If you had a grandmother or grandfather who prayed for you, try saying a prayer for them today. Not because they need rescuing. Because it’s how the whole thing keeps moving.

Today’s Bible Study

Wisdom 3:1 to 3 says the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, that what looks to us like loss, their passing away, their going forth from us, is read entirely differently from where they now stand. They are not gone. They are at peace, and alive in a way we can’t observe from here. I think about my grandmother that way now, not as someone who finished and stopped, but as someone who crossed into a nearness to God that only sharpens whatever she was already doing for the people she loved.

Recommended Reading

The Resources page here doesn’t have a saint tied to grandparents specifically yet, so I’ll just say this instead: pull up the Eternal Rest prayer (Requiem aeternam) and use it this week for whichever grandparent comes to mind. It’s short, it’s old, and it’s exactly the kind of praying the Catechism says actually does something.