Is there anyone not worthy of being prayed for?

Is anyone irredeemable?

I've been pondering this one in the past days.

I was found in a google search last week by someone, who commented on the Prayer for Priest-penitents, implying that I should not pray for such as them, since they are not "nice" people. As I've written before during the Novena for Priests, the priest that helped me during my first true despair is now among those permanently enjoined from ministry. It offended my visitor that I would write anything good about "such as him," even though in my life he was the instrument of God.

Then Monday morning I awoke to The Fish having a call-in on who you'd invite to a dinner with Jesus and three other people. [I sleep with the radio on to mask the noise of the bipap respirator and the oxygen concentrator.] The first that came to me was to invite 1) the Youth for Christ leader who coerced me to commit apostacy those many years ago, 2) Russell Banner, the priest who helped put me back together again afterwards, and 3) my recent commenter, apparently a dear friend of Fr. Banner's accuser, or maybe the accuser himself/herself. The idea lingered, though I wasn't making much logical sense of it --- such a gathering in real-life would likely be explosive rather than peace-engendering. All I could think to do was to image that dinner table in my hands and offer the whole messy web to the Lord for His healing to take place in all of us.

The YFC leader and his sidekick brought many functionally-agnostic teenagers to a saving faith and the knowledge of the Truth --- they also made a shipwreck of my heart and soul.

Fr. Banner was the one who patiently and wisely drew me from despair and was God's instrument to put me back together again, and brought many other parishioners of St. Martha's in Akron to lively active faith --- he also, apparently, has at least one victim-survivor of his own bad acts, in addition to the ordinary stupidities of life.

I know only too well my own failures, not only being a redeemed and restored apostate, but a lifetime's worth of other wrongs and stupidities a lot more voluntary and willful than that horrid night. By the grace of God I have no victims but my own self, but that is _only_ by the grace of God.

I know my own faults. I believe in the plentious redemption, even when I am crying from the depths. If I believe in the plentious redemption for me, how can I not believe in the plentious redemption for others? How can I _not_ pray for all who cross over my path --- _all_ of them. Even those who are "not nice." Even those who have failed in great and public ways. _All_. No exceptions.

Today's saints, Pontian and Hippolytus, knew this. Pontian was the bishop of Rome immediately following a period of persecution, and he believed in the plentious redemption, allowing for the reconciliation and restoration of those poor people who had not remained faithful during the persecution, who ran away or who denied the faith in the trial. Hippolytus was one of his presbyters, and was utterly opposed to the reconciliation of those who had not stood during the trial, except, maybe, on their death-beds, if they'd been penitent enough by his lights. Hippolytus believed that Pontian was horribly lax and soft on sinning --- and was so sure of his rightness that he allowed himself to be invalidly elected bishop by the other priests who agreed with him, becoming the Church's first antipope. Yet, in the end, Hippolytus renounced his error and his supposed episcopacy, was arrested and exiled to hard labor along with Pontian, and they died as friends and martyrs together.

With God, all things are possible. All people are capable of redemption. No one, no matter how far fallen, is unworthy of our prayers, us who are also sinners. God can and will remake each one of us, if we only allow Him.
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