Matthew 13:47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind". Jesus goes on to say that the net will be drawn in when full, and the fishermen will sort the good fish from the bad, with the bad being thrown away. This, Jesus says, is what the angels will do at the close of the age - they will separate the evil from the righteous.

My dad passed away earlier this month, and I have been praying for (and to!) him everyday. (All of the prayers and Masses we can offer for our departed souls give me so much comfort, our faith is so wonderful!) Around the same time that my dad died, O.J. Simpson also died. Whenever I hear of someone dying, I try to offer a prayer for their soul, so when I heard of O.J.'s death, I included him in the prayers I was saying for my dad that day. It felt almost wrong to include a man who appears to be an unrepentant murderer in the same prayers I was saying for my dad, who was one of the best men I've ever known. But the fact that it felt wrong to me niggled at me. "Who needs the prayers more?" I asked myself. My dad, who lived a beautiful life, who received all the final sacraments, who received the Apostolic Blessing, who received the Eucharist almost every day for the last three weeks of his life, and who now has been enrolled in countless Mass and prayer offerings, has everything in his favor for his salvation. He is, I feel most confident, one of the good fish. I am, of course, not to presume He is automatically in heaven, and so I must pray, but neither can I presume that O.J. Simpson has no hope of salvation.

O.J., from what I know of him, which is not much, did not seem like he had a lot in his favor at the moment of his death. But Jesus loves him immensely, died for him, and wants him to be saved. We know from what Jesus revealed to St, Faustina that Jesus pulled out all the stops to get O.J. to accept the smallest bit of God's mercy at the moment of his death. If my prayers can help turn O.J.'s heart at the moment of his death (and prayers go to heaven, which is outside of time, so they can be applied when needed), then they are doing a great service to our Lord. Perhaps I should be praying even more for O.J. than for my dad, although I must admit I am not that selfless.

We are human beings, we do not know the hearts and souls of others, as much as we often think we do. Our job is to help cast out the net, lure as many fish as possible into it, and let Jesus, who does know each of our hearts and minds, and who loves each of us infinitely, sort us all out in the end. Anything we can do to get the fish into the net, including praying for people we think may be lost, is a very good thing. So Dad, I hope you don't mind, but I will continue praying for O.J. when I pray for you!