During a solemn 10 a.m. Mass at St. John's Cathedral on Sunday, Deacon Lester Mackenzie recited the names and ages of six Americans who had lost their lives in Iraq the previous week.

Pray for them, he told the congregation, and for prisoners of war and those missing in action.

Then Mackenzie, who is being ordained today as an Episcopal priest, called on parishioners "to pray for the Iraqi people who have died, whose names we do not know."

Each crimson cross at St. John's represents a lost American -- "the enduring cost of that death to a family of loved ones, to a community of friends and neighbors, to a country," according to the parish's Peace and Justice Committee.

And every gold star symbolize "hundreds and thousands" of Iraqi men, women and children, "whose names we will never know," according to the committee's mission statement. "We acknowledge each of the deaths they represent also forever impacts a family of loved ones, a community of friends and neighbors, and a country."