Since both the departed saints and we ourselves are in Christ, we share with them in the 'communion of saints.' They are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we celebrate the Eucharist they are there with us, along with the angels and archangels. Why then should we not pray for and with them? The reason the Reformers and their successors did their best to outlaw praying for the dead was because that had been so bound up with the notion of purgatory and the need to get people out of it as soon as possible. Once we rule out purgatory, I see no reason why we should not pray for and with the dead and every reason why we should - not that they will get out of purgatory but that they will be refreshed and filled with God's joy and peace. Love passes into prayer; we still love them; why not hold them, in that love, before God? . N.T. Wright
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  2. Give me the Love that leads the way The Faith that nothing can dismay The Hope no disappointments tire The Passion that'll burn like fire Let me not sink to be a clod Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God - Amy Carmichael
  3. Prayer for LoveThank You, Creator of the Universe for the gift of Life you have given me, Thank You for giving me everything that I have ever needed, Thank You for the opportunity to experience this beautiful body and this wonderful mind, Thank You for... - Miguel Ruiz
  4. Sometimes I go to God and say, "God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already. God’s already... - A.W. Tozer
  5. Many people pray to be kept out of unexpected problems. Some people pray to be able to confront and overcome them. - Toba Beta
More Quotes By N.T. Wright
  1. Don’t misunderstand me. The terrorist actions of Al-Qaeda were and are unmitigatedly evil. But the astonishing naivety which decreed that America as a whole was a pure, innocent victim, so that the world could be neatly divided up into evil people (particularly Arabs) and good...
  2. ..left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present..is to live as...
  3. What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead, ' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end.
  4. All Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist.
  5. Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. But without reasons, all we are left with is emotional blackmail. We sometimes call it 'moral blackmail, ' but it has nothing to do with morals,...
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