A Prayer rejected is still a Prayer

I understand that Christopher Hitchens is suffering from cancer of the throat : the same cancer from which my wife died.

I propose to pray for him, as I did for her : not, in other words, that he be cured regardless, but that God’s will be done.

I’m sure he would see this as a cop-out. I don’t.

I’m sure he would emphatically reject my prayers. God won’t.

I dislike Mr Hitchens, and the damage he has quite intentionally, deliberately, and knowingly done to the Church, and to the Catholic Faith; but he, like me, and like my late wife, is a child of God, who will eventually have to answer to God for his life; so I pray that God’s will be done . . . remembering that God’s will is always that the sinner comes to recognize his sins and repent of them; even if that be in the very last instants of life.

I don’t think anyone’s view from Heaven would be improved by the sight of Christopher Hitchens in Hell : so I pray that – through the grace of God – he comes to a recognition that God’s mercy is his only hope, and relies on it to save his soul.