Schindler’s List is a movie about the Holocaust in World War II and a German businessperson’s fight to save the lives of as many Jews as he could. He accomplished this through business trickery and giving many bribes and gifts to Nazi officials. At the end of the movie, he laments how he could have saved more people if he had only sold more of his belongings and hadn’t wasted so much money. He looks at his car and estimates that it was worth ten people’s lives and his gold Nazi pin, which could have been used to bribe and save one more person. It’s a powerful scene where someone who saved 1,100 lives wished he could have done more and he didn’t.
I was thinking about this scene and how it mirrors our efforts toward salvation. Every time we pray, fast, or practice virtue, we are bringing souls closer to Heaven. This may be our own soul or it may be someone else’s. Our prayers save lives. Prayers, fasting, and offerings save people from eternal damnation in Hell. Likewise, there are those freed from the torments of Purgatory because of prayers.
Like Oskar Schindler’s realization and the end of the film, while we may do much to save souls, we can often do so much more. Think of all the desserts you’ve had that could have been offered instead as a sacrifice. Or the doom-scrolling and binge-watching that could have been spent in prayer. I can visualize myself in Oaskar’s shoes, standing before God one day, seeing the events of my life, and lamenting how I could have done more but didn’t.
Few people truly understand the power of prayer and fasting. Personally, I often forget about it when I indulge in more earthly delights — that extra dessert, the 10 more minutes of mindless YouTube videos, giving less money in the parish’s offertory, not striving to do charitable works, etc. There are so many missed opportunities to save souls every day. Imagine the difference we could make if we made one more sacrifice each day. Think of the souls we would convert and save!
It’s rare that people dedicate their lives to prayer for their souls and the souls of others. That is what the children at Fatima did after our Mother Mary gave them a glimpse of Hell. How many of those souls in Hell might have been converted and saved if someone had taken a little extra effort to pray for them? The children of Fatima understood this and oriented their entire lives around saving as many people from Hell as they could through prayer, fasting, and sacrifice. If only we were all that dedicated.
I need to add a small disclaimer. I’m not saying that not fasting or not praying will send people to Hell. Think back to Oskar Schindler’s regret about not doing enough. He did not exterminate the Jews; the Nazis did. And we don’t have the power to determine someone’s eternal fate. God alone reserves that power. What I’m saying is that when we don’t pray, fast, or practice virtue, we miss an opportunity to help bring people closer to God. A missed prayer or sacrifice could have given you or someone else that needed spiritual boost to resist temptation or shave some time from purgatory.
While we are called to act as the saints do, most of us fall short. But that doesn’t mean we can’t strive to do a bit more. We can fast a little more, pray a little longer, and sacrifice life’s minor pleasures, and offer our sufferings as small as they might be. Maybe when we enter God’s kingdom, we will see all those souls our actions in our life helped save. And hopefully, we don’t regret the many more souls that may have been saved if we had done just a little more.