Strange Denouement to a Prayer Request

A reader writes:

Thanks for sharing my prayer request last week. I emailed you about my friend who suffered an injury that led to memory problems. Well, I have an update, but first, here’s more of the story. My friend was a member of a Catholic facebook group. In this group, we’d crack jokes, engage in semi-organized apologetics, and generally have a great time. I’d known him for months before the accident.

Or I thought I did anyway. We’ve recently found out that this person was a fake profile…an elaborate lie. There is no injury, no memory loss, no friend.
I don’t know who this person is; I can’t call him my friend anymore, but he probably needs more prayers for this than he would for the fictional injury. I also wanted you to know the truth, and to thank you for your prayers, even if they were for a lie.

I wonder if the guy had decided my reader and his trusting friends “had no right to the truth” and therefore concluded that he was not really lying. Or maybe he decided that he was “acting” and therefore not lying. Or perhaps he reasoned that he was somehow going to achieve something for the Greater Good (Catholic apologetics! The glory of God!) by his noble lies. Hard to say, since he was lying.

Father, help this man learn how to live in and speak truth and to repent his lies. And help the people he lied to recover their capacity to trust. Help them forgive him his betrayal of that trust. Mother Mary, pray for all concerned. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.