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Guest host, Chis Check, asks Fr. Hugh to defend praying for the dead. Fr. Hugh explains why praying for the dead is every Christian’s duty.
Cy Kellett:
What are Catholics doing when we pray for the dead? Father Hugh Barbour is next. Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your usual host, but we’ve got a guest host today, Chris Check, in conversation with Father Hugh Barbour.
Catholics, as we’ve said on an earlier episode this month, pray for the dead all throughout November. So this time, we asked Father Hugh Barbour to explain that practice to give us a better understanding of what the Church believes about the situation of the dead and what we’re doing when we pray for them.
Please subscribe to Focus wherever you get your podcasts, maybe Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, that way you’ll be notified when new podcasts are available and your financial help is what makes this podcast possible. You can give us that help by going to givecatholic.com. Now, a little bit of praying for the dead.
Chris Check:
Welcome to Catholic Answers Focus. Chris Check sitting in for Cy Kellett. My guest, Father Hugh Barbour, we are talking today about praying for the dead. Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, king of glory, deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the pains of hell and from the bottomless pit, deliver them from the lion’s mouth, the hell swallow them not up, that they fall not into darkness, but let the standard-bearer holy Michael, lead them into that holy light, which thou didst promised of old to Abraham and to his seed.
We offer to thee Oh, Lord sacrifices and prayers. Do thou receive them in behalf of those souls of whom we make memorial this day. Grant them Oh, Lord to pass from death to that life, which thou didst promise of old to Abraham and his seed. Father Hugh Barbour, I know you recognize that is the English translation of the offertory from All Souls Day and for the daily Mass of the dead in the extraordinary form or the traditional Latin Mass.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And also in the new Mass as well.
Chris Check:
[crosstalk 00:02:18]
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Gregorian as an option. It’s not in the missal but it’s in the graduale.
Chris Check:
But I thought that would be a great way to begin this conversation because it really does focus our attention-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It does, truly focus on…
Chris Check:
…on the drama of salvation.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And it gives us a few questions maybe.
Chris Check:
Right. Very good. Well, let me actually go lead… Did you have one that you want to answer right away?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
No, you just ask, please.
Chris Check:
I want to… We’re talking about praying for the dead. We could even say making sacrifices for the dead, right?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Check:
I want to lead with … Let’s get the obvious apologetic question out of the way. For our Protestant listeners, why are we praying for the dead? They’re in heaven, they’re in hell. If they’re Calvinists, maybe they were predestined to go to hell. Why are we praying?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
If they were Catholics, at least they are predestined to go to hell.
Chris Check:
That’s right. Of course, yes. So why are we bothering to pray for the dead? This whole purgatory thing, it’s just a way for you guys to make money, right?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
No, absolutely not. In fact, if it’s a way for us to make money, then we’d all end up in hell. So we’re not interested in that. Well, as the wording of that prayer implies, we’re praying for the departed, but we’re praying that they not fall into hell and fall into the mouth of the lion and be eternally lost it seems. But actually, that prayer is so ancient, it goes back to a time when the terminology…
And we see this in the Apostles’ Creed, for example, where any place after death that wasn’t heaven was called hell. It could be the hell of the damned. It could be the limbo of the just, it could be purgatory. It could be the limbo of the unbaptized. But the term hell was used.
When we say like of the Lord, He descended into hell and rose again on the third day, that means the hell, none of the damned, but of those who were waiting detained from the vision of God, waiting for the liberation that would come from Him.
And consequently, the Jews of the Old Testament, it understands the world to come either in terms of a heaven of beatitude and resurrection. Or if not that, then some being detained short of that, which doesn’t have to be always eternal damnation. That is everyone before Christ was in hell.
Chris Check:
We think of Lazarus and the rich man.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Lazarus was, in the bosom of Abraham, he wasn’t being punished. The rich man was either in the hell of the damned or in purgatory. Now, I would say to our protestant friends-
Chris Check:
There is hope for the rich.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
I would say to our Protestant friends, especially rich Protestant friends who are welcome to give to Catholic Answers if they would like.
Chris Check:
Indeed.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
I’m sure we have some Protestant benefactors.
Chris Check:
We do.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Okay. But to our protestant friends, how is it that this man is in the hell of the damned if he shows such compassion and concern for his brothers? He says, “Please have someone go back and tell them so they won’t come to this place.”
Chris Check:
Well, and that he’s able to communicate in the other side.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. What he’s communicating right directly there actually, he’s asking for Abraham’s intercession. It’s very, very clear that there’s a lot of personal stuff going on beyond the grave, not just between earth and heaven, but also between hell of punishment or purgatory and the abode, the bosom of Abraham where the just who are no longer being punished were waiting to be redeemed by Christ.
It’s clear that the rich man is in a purgatory, because if he were in the hell of the damned, he would be malicious, he’d be hateful. He’d be recriminatory. He wouldn’t be apologetic. He wouldn’t have compassion for his brothers who are living the way he did. He just doesn’t want to be punished severely. He wants them to turn from their ways to be converted and live right. So there you are. There’s an example of a purgatory in the New Testament to say a little bit.
Chris Check:
So your confrere, Father Alan, was with us yesterday and offering Mass on All Souls Day.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
All Souls Day. Right.
Chris Check:
And he made the point that… He stressed in his homily… That it is considerably preferable for us to get our purgatory here, to expiate our sins.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yeah, those tough people they believe that.
Chris Check:
Yes. On this side of the veil.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But it’s true.
Chris Check:
You’ve got more nuance.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It’s preferable because we love God’s glory and we don’t want to offend Him. And so we want to be all checked out in order to receive His gifts in abundance, both in this life and in the next. I wouldn’t say you would say it’s preferable because you’re going to get it after death if you don’t do it now. That’s true enough. But the real preferability has to do with our love for God.
Chris Check:
Yes
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Why wouldn’t you want to see God sooner rather than later? Why would you want to delay? You already have the delay of this life. Why would you want to delay any further? And so it’s the attitude of the saints. And our Lord will take that into account if we earnestly desire heaven, that will also, as our Lord says, “Charity covers a multitude of sins.”
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Love for God is what we want. We long to see Him face to face. And in spite of our many faults and weaknesses, if we work on that longing, God will fulfill it. And we will not be subject to as dire a purification. But certainly, it’s better to be ready just to go straight to heaven.
Chris Check:
So a little bit of counsel for our listeners from your confrere Father Alan that when we are inconvenienced or when we suffer on this side of the veil, and we all do every day to one degree or another, that is an opportunity for us to pay the price for the sins that we owe. We broke the window, but now we can be forgiven, but now we have to repair.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right, we patiently endure the trials of this life.
Chris Check:
I want to know exactly if someone suffers from a little bit of scrupulosity about this practice. This is actually a true story, yesterday, we raise the cavaliers.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
You’re telling a true story?
Chris Check:
[crosstalk 00:08:30]. This is not an example. This is an actual event that happened, but I mean, it would have been true if-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It’s not a mere example?
Chris Check:
No, but it would be true, even if it didn’t happen, but this, in fact, did happen. That’s what I mean to say.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
[crosstalk 00:08:41].
Chris Check:
So, you know that Jackie raises these little Spaniels. And so they’re on this elite dog food that she [crosstalk 00:08:48] cavalier King Charles Spaniels. She’s got on this special, so I needed to go pick some up. Typically, we ordered- but it hadn’t come.
Anyway, I went to the wrong store at the end of the day, and this was a nuisance because it had already been a long day and I was looking forward to getting home and having dinner and whatnot. But I quite actually did recall father Alan’s counsel. And I thought, okay, well, here’s an opportunity.
I’m inconvenience this is irritating me, but I have a lot of sense to a tone for, is it sufficient for me to just call that to mind at that moment, or perhaps offer a prayer so that it counts Catholics are always worrying about, is this counting and that-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Everything counts.
Chris Check:
Right. What’s a good practice for someone so that he can keep this to the fore of his imagination throughout the day?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Surely you can make a prayer at the time, but if you have that work on that habitual awareness of God’s presence and his providential guiding of your life, then it becomes natural or instinctive that our first thought with difficulties, or at least our second thought or something fairly soon after the experience begins is that, “Well after all God is directing my life and this may be for my correction or perfection or that of others.” It should be a normal way. As it says in the apocalypse, “Those whom I love, I rebuke and chastise.”
Chris Check:
Yeah.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So that’s when we receive these irritations, we have to realize, there’s signs of God’s love for us because he’s purifying our hearts. And the worst thing in the world is to be deluded about yourself, to suffer from illusions about yourself. And there’s even a popular word that we use for people that are openly an obviously deluded about themselves. But I won’t say it on air.
Let’s just say it has seven letters. Anyway, but there’s a word we use for people that are so obviously don’t get it that they are offensive. And we don’t want to be that way especially not in the presence of God who’s sending us these gifts, these little kisses from heaven. I remember one of our priests describes sufferings as kisses from Jesus.
And then one of the novices said one day, Jesus has been kissing me a lot today, and I wish He would stop. It’s okay if you don’t need to. But the fact is they are assigned to of God’s love. Sufferings, as difficult as they are, are rarely, sometimes they are, but they’re rarely as riveting and terrifying as we make them out to be before the fact.
Chris Check:
And especially in this month of November, the Church recommends to us that we can also offer these for the Holy souls in purgatory.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Absolutely.
Chris Check:
Right. And so when we’re in the octave of All Saints Day, the priest has the option to offer a Requiem Mass, right?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. At any open day, during November and in the traditional rite, for the first days after All Souls Day, that week after he can say that in preference to the other Masses. And there’s some great saints during that week. There’s Martin de Porres, Charles Borromeo.
Chris Check:
Charles Borromeo.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
There’s some really good people there, but you can do it all if you want. Yes. And it’s very important to remember that what is the engine you might say, or the driving force behind the ability of our prayers to assist the departed. And it’s a very precise thing theologically, even though we don’t have to have it figured out to do it we just do it, pray for the departed. That’s what we need to know.
You can’t figure it out. That’s fine. But it’s helpful to know that that part of our moral life that we can share with others at will, it’s a possession that we can use to give to somebody else, is a part we call satisfaction. That is when we perform actions, which have value because of the love with which we do them. They have a particular value, which is good for paying a debt.
Our Lord says it about sin. You will not be released until you pay the last farthing that is Lord constantly uses the terminology of debt and imprisonment for that part of our sins, which we ourselves will have to participate in expiating. If he were like a lot of evangelical Christians are, he wouldn’t talk that way.
Chris Check:
No.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
All right. He’d says explicitly that we’ll have to pay for it. And he’s not talking about hell. He’s talking about getting us ready for heaven. Satisfactory part is due to the actions we perform in the love of God. And that can be shared. Love is a diffusive. It’s shares itself. The merit we have of our good actions we can’t share. His merit is our right to reward.
And the only one who can share His merits is Jesus. His merits are for everybody else. His merits define the whole picture. We wouldn’t be saved without His merits, which are shared with us, but then we have the satisfactory power of our good works to add to that assistance and to help the department. Therefore, the works, which we perform for the dead that are the most effective for them are the ones that are performed with the most intense charity.
Now, this is important because some works are more intently ordered towards charity, towards neighbor than others. For example, you could fast for the faithful departed, but that’s not as St. Thomas Would point out, not the most effective way of helping the departed because fasting is for your one’s own correction. And although we do it with enough love we can offer it for them, and that’s fine.
Chris Check:
So acts of mortification aren’t necessarily what we’re looking for?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
We do look for those, but I’m trying to build up to the one that really matters. And prayers are also very, very effective.
Chris Check:
Pray for the living and the dead.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. Exactly. And as my parents say, pray for the dead and the dead pray for you.
Chris Check:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And they were [inaudible 00:14:41]. They used to sing it to that Chopin funeral March, pray for the dead and the dead we’ll pray for you. We used to laugh as kids that would never do it at a Halloween. Anyway the thing that helps the departed the most… And a lot of Catholics forget this, is charity towards our neighbor. It’s works of mercy. That’s why we have the whole Catholic tradition from the whole middle ages.
Churches are built. Bridges are built. Hospitals are built, All things come about for suffrage, for the departed. That’s how it all began. So that’s the works of charity. The whole middle ages is built upon the idea that if I do this work of charity for the departed, I will in fact gain them a quicker release because I do it out of love.
And therefore, it’s more powerful than if I were just fasting or just saying a prayer for them. And this is very important. That’s even the origin of Halloween. The poor came around to the houses. It’s not all the stuff, that ridiculous stuff that you hear from Jack Chick, and all that nonsense. It’s ridiculous. These people have obscene pornographic, religious imaginations.
They imagine all these things that aren’t true. So the poor went around and they told the wealthy when they came to their doors or, and were answered by the butler or whoever’s keeping the door, give us to eat and we will pray for your master’s dead. And so they would get some… They’d get some meat and some bread and whatever, and then they would pray for their departed. And that’s the origin of that.
The works of charity are very important and it’s often forgotten. That’s why people, the practice that still goes on. If people leaving something in memory of someone flowers on the alter and present Churches, the flowers of Sunday are given to the memory of so-and-so. The origin of that is a naming who’s after the part of people, it was for there… It was for their benefit to do works of charity for them, which we’re capable of doing.
And then they share in it because of the love with which we do them. But then to top all that off, what is the Supreme work of charity, the most magnificent work of charity that was ever performed by anyone for his neighbors? That’s obviously the cross of our Lord, greater love than this. No man has any give his life for his friends. And so we have that in our power, which is the most powerful thing. And that is the Holy Mass.
Chris Check:
So, have Masses said?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. Have Masses said for departed. Or when you go to Mass, remember them frequently, especially the consecration, remembering that Christ sacrifice is being offered that moment and really pray for the department at that point, because there you have the full love of the heart of Christ being poured out for the living and the dead this time-
Chris Check:
Let’s imagine someone’s listening father, who is unaware of this practice, or did not know that he or she could have Masses said for a departed friend or departed ancestor, what does he or she have to do?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Well, the best thing… Certainly parish Churches receive Mass intentions. And so you can go to your parish Church and say, I’d like to have Mass offered for so-and-so, but maybe more helpful would be to approach a Catholic entity than then gives the Mass intentions out to needy priests around the world.
Chris Check:
To the missions [crosstalk 00:17:50]
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
The missions and whatnot. For example, Catholic Answers will do that. If we’re not able to say the Mass, you can send in a Mass intention here, and the Catholic Answers we’ll make sure that somebody’s a worthy priest, gets the intention and says it properly.
Chris Check:
St. Michael’s Abbey does that?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. And St. Michael’s Abbey, we do it, but also aid to the Church in need. You may have heard that they’re very keen on Mass intentions. Almost any religious order altogether has that. The Franciscans, the Brown Franciscans and the Benedictines, the various kinds, but you can certainly easily have Masses said for the intentions of the departed.
The most traditional form is the 30 consecutive Mass is called the Gregorian Mass for the department that goes back to Pope Saint Gregory The great, but that’s another story. But the Mass, first of all, then works of charity, then prayers, and then penances. And that may be counterintuitive because we might think penances will be more to the point, because of course after all aren’t they suffering.
But remember it’s the charity with which we do it. And the object of penance is our own perfection. But the object of works of mercy is the good of our neighbor. And therefore it’s more effective per se, to give the dead as though they themselves have performed these actions, we offer them and give them for their suffering.
Chris Check:
Because they cannot perform them?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. They cannot, they’re unable to do that.
Chris Check:
Father, also this month, the Church recommends, especially on All Souls Day, but in the week following, especially visiting a cemetery?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. And this points out something we didn’t mention. And that as of course, that because of the super abundance of satisfactions in the Church of our Lord, our lady in the saints, the Church has the practice of Holy indulgences, where you can gain a remission of temporal punishment due to sin by performing certain prayers works of mercy, or penances. Those are the categories indulgence.
Visiting the cemetery during the month of November for the first eight days, normally from the first through the eighth can gain a plenary indulgence for the department that is a full remission of the debt of their sin. You can offer that for whatever soul at any prefers, or you can have a particular soul in mind, but then now, because of the particular circumstances in the world today, the Holy Father recently had a decree put out from Rome that any eight days in November, it doesn’t have to be the first eight.
And if you can’t manage to meet the requirements, which are Communion and confession, then you can do those at some other time but just make sure you have the proper intention. And of course you pray for the intention of the Pope, but that’s an indulgence for the departed. All the indulgence of the Church offers and that rosary said in Church or in front of the sacrament, it’s a plenary indulgence, or said in common with other people, it’s a plenary indulgence and it’s partial other times, partial is really plenary. If you only have a tiny bit of purgatory left, well, a partial indulgences practice this are attributing to that last instant when they leave. So we’re all helping them, whatever…
So we can inform ourselves on that. That’s on the Catholic answers website, for sure. Questions about indulgences. And also there’s the handbook of indulgences, which is available from Catholic booksellers.
We have many things that give us all of that, but simply enough to say the Church grants a partial indulgence for every prayer we offer the course of our day, every voluntary mortification denying ourselves something we’re allowed to have and every work of mercy that we perform and then jumbled the second added any act of Christian witness, like saying grace in a restaurant or wearing a cross or something like that.
So we have those four prayer, mortification’s or penances, and works of mercy, and acts of Christian witness. And those are all indulgence.
Chris Check:
And do all these things with your children so that when you are dead, they will do them for you.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Exactly. And St. Thomas says those who are helped the most in purgatory are those who were most devout and kind to the dead in life.
Chris Check:
Yeah. Amen.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Amen.
Chris Check:
Father, I just want to ask you two more questions if we have time, I received an inquiry from a friend of mine who has Protestant ancestors. And he was wondering if in fact that if he could pray for them and I assured him that he could, but then-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Of course.
Chris Check:
Yes, absolutely.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
All the more.
Chris Check:
Right. But then he also believe-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
No one has been praying for them since they died. Poor things.
Chris Check:
And they didn’t have the availability of the sacraments when they were alive.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Well, not all of them anyway.
Chris Check:
Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And so they’re really happy to have a Catholic descendant who can pray for them or will pray for them.
Chris Check:
But he was also concerned that some of his ancestors had formerly been masons. And he wondered if in fact there was some right of the Church or something that he might be able to atone for them in particular.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
The thing is this- obviously Masonic membership is forbidden to the children of the Catholic Church. And it’s also forbidden… It was forbidden by certain secretary States because of the nature of the organization, secret society and all that. But I wouldn’t overdo that. I think there’s a tendency nowadays with a lot of the deliverance ministry and whatnot, that when they look for a reason why someone’s being vexed by the demons, they say they have Masonic as well.
Anyone that has Protestant ancestors has masons for sure. I mean, your grandparents, both my grandfathers, don’t anybody who will… They’ll probably start saying that father who’s a [inaudible 00:23:16] but he’s one of them also. But the fact is if you’re from a Protestant family in the South, you’ve got masons all over the place.
Chris Check:
And look how you turned out.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right, I’m not demon possessed. Thanks be to God.
Chris Check:
Amen.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
And I think that there’s, overreaction. I think it comes from Catholics who are ignorant of the nature of masonry and overdo it satanic elements, which are real and do exist in the world. But normally the garden variety, small town, masonry of the Anglo-American world is very different from the vicious anti-clerical hate ofmasonry of the Latin world.
Now, granted the Anglo-American masonry would politically support the continental and Latin form, but it was never as vehemently anti Catholic as what you will find in Latin America, Mexico, and Italy and France and places like that. So you can’t generalize too much. It’s not an organization that you can generalize a lot about. And of course, it’s just so much bogus nonsense.
I have a copy of the book for my grandfather’s for the Scottish Rite called Morals and Dogma by Pike. It’s just the goofiest stuff you’ve ever read. It’s all about the basic foundation of reality is magic. Let Jack Chick start off on that. Well, he claims we founded the Masons also. Well, so I would say pray for them. And certainly their Masonic membership didn’t help them spiritually.
But on the other hand, if they were completely ignorant and they just viewed it as a nice way to get together with people and do good works, then it might not have done them a whole lot of damage either. But the fact is, is just too bad. And when you’re not a member of the true Church founded by Jesus Christ and under a discipline, you can fall into all these things.
Chris Check:
One more question, Father, you mentioned in your sermon today that because we are human persons, body, soul composite, that the worst suffering we face is death because it separates the body and the soul?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
We’re suffering from this last point of view.
Chris Check:
Okay. Right.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Apart from the ones we can’t do anything about apart from damnation, obviously.
Chris Check:
Give us a little color to that and what it means.
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But the intensity… Let’s say the intensity of the evil endured by us should be measured by what we actually are. And I’m not saying that you could subjectively not have an experience that’s worse than death, but the fact is objectively for your human nature to be dissolved as a human person and left in your constituent of a spiritual soul, which is the form of the body and the body, which is no longer you, it’s no longer you, you are the composite.
So as I said, my mother lying in her casket is not my mother. And that’s really that we’re faced with that in death. The person that I loved and who gave me birth no longer exists.
Chris Check:
Does this-
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Soul still exists. But the person that I knew and gave me life no longer exist. And that’s why we have the hope and trust in the resurrection.
Chris Check:
Does this separation of the body and the soul exacerbate the suffering of the souls in purgatory?
Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yes. In this sense that their waiting for God has an intensity that it would not otherwise have because nothing is diffused. It’s all intense in its nature. It’s just the full weight of the inclinations and also of the undergoing the passions, the sufferings of a pure, simple spirit. And so what they do endure is felt very, very intensely.
That’s why Saint Augustine says that the souls in purgatory suffer more… Their sufferings are greater than anything that we would endure in this life. But of course, that has to be understood, not in the sense of torture chamber horrors type thing, but just that being so intensely, simple and focused, they can’t take their mind off what they’re enduring.
So they have this ardent thirst for God and the complete, and total and generous, willingness to undergo whatever it takes to see Him face to face. That’s all they want. And so they’re suffering more than they ever did before in life, but it’s part of the process of death. But on the other hand, they are at greater peace than they ever were in life.
Cy Kellett:
For all the time he was here as our chaplain father, Hugh Barbour, implored us, instructed us, asked us, pleaded with us, pray for the dead, because this is a real work of charity that we can do. It makes real difference in the lives of our deceased brothers and sisters, whether we know them, or we don’t know them, as father said, one of the primary ways that you can do that, give to the poor.
It helps in two ways, one, it benefits the poor, and also that act of charity on your part can be given as a good, as a spiritual good to those who need help making it through all the way through to the house of the father. Thanks so much for joining us. Hey, we’d love to hear from you, send us an email, send it to focus@catholic.com. We’ve been getting a lot of good suggestions for future episodes.
Also, if you have a critique, those are welcome focus@catholic.com. Don’t forget to subscribe, and please give us that five star review wherever you listen, that helps to grow the podcast. That also helps to grow the podcast. Those of you who are watching on YouTube, just like, and subscribe and that makes a big difference for us I’m Cy Kellett your host. Thank you so much for joining us. We’ll see you next time. God willing right here on Catholic Answers focus.