Thomas Griffin 6/6/25
Join Our Email List
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
The Empty Tomb Project is a non-profit organization – 501(c)(3) – please support our mission by making a tax-deductible donation. DONATE HERE
Read “Empty Tomb Project: The Magazine”
Let Us Begin: New Book on the Life and Power of St. Francis
Each morning my drive to work takes about 25-30 minutes. After hearing a colleague of mine, who lives a town over for me, speak about how he uses the time each morning to pray the rosary – I began the practice and never looked back. For the last few years, my morning’s have looked exactly the same. I get into the car, turn the radio off and take my rosary beads out of my pocket.
After I recite my personal intentions, I recite the creed and move into an Our Father for the Holy Father. The first time I went to pray the rosary on my way to work after Easter, I instinctively began to pray for the intentions of Pope Francis. Then something powerful struck me, Pope Francis had passed away. I needed to adapt my prayer to ask the Holy Spirit to prepare and guide the College of Cardinals in electing a new pope.
This moment was more sad than I was anticipating. For years, I had thought of and prayed for Pope Francis – every single morning. Now, he was gone and I was going to move on to praying for his successor in the coming weeks. On the drive that morning, I realized that I had grown closer to the pope even though I never had never met him. I had never had a conversation with him in my life or been in his presence. My prayer for him united me to him in a meaningful and powerful way.
This is what prayer does – especially intercessory prayer. All prayer is communication with God. All prayers a desire to experience His true presence more deeply. However, when we pray for other people, we are doing something that is intimate and critical.
There is nothing in the world that can bring us closer to somebody who is not physically next to us then to pray for them. This is a fact because God is transcendent. Space and time do not disable him from powerfully working and people’s lives. It is critical to pray for other people because we are sacrificing our attention out of love for someone else. When we pray for someone consistently, they’re asking God to be with them.
God always has us on his mind and in his heart. There’s never a moment that he is not loving us. Praying this way, especially for the pope, we have an impact on the church that has eternal consequences. I think it is that reality that I experienced in the car that morning.
As we continue in the early days of the papacy of Pope Leo XIV, I desire to be more intentional in praying for him each day because there will come a day (God willing, long from now) when he will no longer be our pope. No matter what our opinions are about everything that any pope says or does, he is our Peter. Praying for him is a responsibility for every Catholic but it is also a way to grow closer to Christ.
When we pray for someone consistently, we become closer to Jesus and closer to the person. Christ desires to hear everything that is on our mind and in our heart. Our hopes and dreams for a renewal in the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Father, is something that he also desires. When we pray for that intention, God brings us close to the Holy Father and strengthens us to live our faith in a powerful way.
So, join me in making a firmer commitment to praying for our new pope. Doing so will unite us to him and bring the faithful closer together. It will also carry us all to the heart of God, who ceaselessly cares for us and desperately desires to be in a deeper relationship with us.
Thomas Griffin is the chairperson of the religion department at a Catholic high school on Long Island where he lives with his wife and three children. He has a masters degree in theology and is a masters candidate in philosophy. Thomas is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Empty Tomb Project: The Magazine. He is the author of Let Us Begin: Saint Francis’s Way of Becoming Like Christ and Renewing the World.
Join Our Email List
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Empty Tomb Project 