Amid the carnage of the nightmarish morning, she prayed. 

To the godless left, Cathrine Spandel is a sinner. 

Spandel, according to NPR, was in attendance at Church of the Annunciation’s first mass of the school year Wednesday when hell broke loose — literally. 

A demonic “transgender maniac,” as the New York Post aptly described the monster, stood outside and shot through the windows of the Minneapolis neighborhood Catholic church. A man dressed in black with a seething hatred in his heart trained much of his fire on the school children gathered. The worshippers had just finished singing Psalm 139, “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me,” according to the news outlet, when the first shots rang out. 

Spandel told NPR that she reached for the children’s pastoral minister, who had ducked under a pew a couple of rows in front of her. 

“She was facing me and we reached towards each other and we prayed the Hail Mary together and we were both crying,” Spandel said. “And I asked God for absolution from all my sins. I asked Him to protect my family because I was certain that I was going to die.” 

She did not die. But two children — just 8 and 10 years old — were murdered in the coldest of blood. Another 15 children and three adult parishioners were injured, according to authorities. 

After what Spandel said felt like “forever,” the shooter, a 23-year-old man who had claimed to be a woman, turned the gun on himself. He’s dead. The pain and suffering he has wrought lives on. 

‘Forget About Thoughts and Prayers’

The story, from a liberal news organization long openly hostile to traditional Christian values, perhaps unwittingly underscores the pivotal role prayer plays in the lives of the faithful — in joy and tragedy. Spandel, NPR reported, also prayed over an injured girl. 

“She had a head wound. They triaged her number one, got her right out to the ambulance. She is alive. She’s expected to live,” the Catholic parishioner said. 

From thousands of miles away, millions of people have said their own prayers for the victims of this senseless violence. But leftists like Jen Psaki have contemptuously pooh-poohed the power of prayer in the wake of the church shooting. 

“Prayer is not freaking enough,” the MSNBC host and former press secretary for President Joe Biden posted on X a couple of hours after the attack. “Prayers does [sic] not end school shootings. prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”

Left-wingers continued their loathsome verbal assault even as health care professionals tended to the seriously injured. The Federalist’s Elle Purnell documented some of the many tirades. 

“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying,” scolded Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey at a press conference. 

“‘Forget about thoughts and prayers,’ echoed CNN host Dana Bash, describing Frey’s position as one ‘most people feel.’”

Who are “the most”? 

Prayer Matters

The implication, of course, is that prayer is useless. What is needed, Frey and friends assert, are broader, stricter gun-control laws. They don’t want to bring up the fact that Minnesota’s “red flag” law, which is supposed to prevent such tragedies, didn’t work in this case. 

They don’t want to talk about prayer, and they certainly don’t want to talk about the sick and twisted “transgender” mind behind the mass shooting. And they definitely don’t want to talk about a wicked culture of death that has abandoned God. Or Psalm 139, that God is ever with his children in all times — a prayer lifted up by Annunciation church faithful just seconds before the murderer struck. 

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

What is lost in the noisy gong of secularism is that answered and unanswered prayers alike serve the most important purpose under heaven: They draw us closer to God. 

This broken world could use more prayer, not less, to heal what so deeply ails us. Pray in good times and bad, as Catherine Spandel clearly has done. 

Here’s a good place to start:

Our Father which art in heaven

Hallowed be thy Name, 

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done in earth, 

As it is in heaven. 

Give us this day our daily bread. 

And forgive us our debts,

As we forgive our debtors. 

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: 

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. 

Amen. 

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