by Dale Ahlquist
"Mary, Sign of Salvation" by Fr. Brian Daley, S.J.
October 2004
"Catholic Social Teaching and the Law" by Michael Scaperlanda
"The Catholic Church: Defender of Freedom?" by H.W. Crocker III
Prayer
By Bishop Thomas J. Welsh
“As
long as there are exams, there will be prayer in public schools.”
That saying is an example of the adage, “Many a true word is spoken in
jest.” On the afternoon and evening of 9/11 churches were filled!
Something very frightening was happening, and we were not masters of
our destiny. We turned to prayer! Older people among us recalled
from WWII that there were no atheists in the holes. Graves in Normandy
and Anzio were marked with crosses or stars of David, and no one
objected. To examine this phenomenon of prayer gets us very quickly to fundamental questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Is there someone in control?
“I Did It My Way,” Frank Sinatra used to sing, but then he died, didn’t he? We have split the atom yet have lived in fear of atom bombs. We have overcome leprosy but have no handle on HIV or cancer. As Albert Camus observed, the Enlightenment led to the Blackout. We spend more time in airports than in the air, yet no one really feels secure.
If God didn’t exist, we would have had to have invented Him, someone said. Saint Augustine, a long time ago, observed that God has made us for Himself and that our hearts are restless until they rest in Him. Prayer is a response to this reality: God has made us (we are not the casual consequence of spontaneous combustion), and He made us for a purpose, a sublime purpose: to be with Him.
This brief refresher course on prayer has one text: The Catechism of the Catholic Church (an Image Book by Doubleday, 1995.) As textbooks go, it is a rare bargain at eight or nine dollars. As textbooks go, it is an even rarer bargain – you will really want to hold on to it! It has four sections and the fourth is on PRAYER. There we read: “Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God.” (n 2559)
Before teaching us how to pray (remember the Apostles asking Jesus, “Lord, teach us how to pray”), the new Catechism gives us a history of prayer from the beginning. Abel offered sacrifice to God and so did Noah after the flood. Noah and later Abraham are said to have “walked with God.” Moses, called by God, was also reminded to be reverent in God’s presence: "Take off your sandals. This is a holy place." God was visibly with the chosen people and led them out of Egypt in the cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night. When Moses spoke to God on the mountains, his face became so radiant that he had to cover it when he went back down to the people. And God spoke to them. He gave them the commandments which they carried with them in the Ark of the Covenant and placed in the Temple when Solomon had built it. All these things are recorded in the Old Testament.
One entire book of the Old Testament is a prayer book, the Psalms, many of which we are all familiar with because they are quoted in the New Testament and in Mass; e.g. “The Lord is my Shepherd…”; “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me…”
God made us in His image and likeness – we learned that in the very first book of our Bible, Genesis. Prayer is our response. Saint Therese, the Little Flower, said, “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart. It is a simple look turned toward heaven.”
The new Catechism tells us that humility is the foundation of all prayer: I believe in God my creator and Redeemer.
When I was in parochial school (Saint Nicholas, Weatherly, Pennsylvania) the I.H.M. Sisters taught us that there are four kinds of prayer or aspects of our looking toward heaven. The word, "ACTS," was our memory key.
1) Adoration
2) Contrition
3) Thanksgiving
4) Supplication
Now I’ve been a priest for fifty-eight years so you can guess how long ago the Sisters
taught me and how good a job they did. God bless them!
The “new” Catechism, no surprise, has those types of prayers all there, although with a slightly different grouping:
1) Blessing and Adoration
2) Petition
3) Intercession
4) Thanksgiving
5) Praise (n. 2626-2643)
Perhaps a reason we don’t pray more or better is that we are not convinced that it
makes any difference. If we see ourselves only as little ants scurrying about on a speck in space, prayer is a joke. If there is anybody our there, why would he/she/it pay attention to me? If you take that approach, then you have to conclude that all the good things done by all the good people in recorded history have been an insane waste of time and effort. And natural things such as the Romans building aqueducts to bring fresh water to Rome, or Columbus (combining natural and super natural) bringing missionaries to the New World, and these were the days when a teenager in Italy, named Michelangelo, was working on the Pieta!
It seems to me a whole lot simpler and much more reasonable to make room for God and for good in our scheme of life.
Looking at those categories of prayer a bit in detail can rather fill us with a sense of purpose, of hope, and we, naturally enough, begin with Blessing and Adoration. Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament is a prayer form once very common and now happily becoming more common again. With the Blessed Sacrament visible on the altar we thank the Son of God for staying with us even though He has gone back to heaven. We call our prayer form the Divine Praises and they begin with “Blessed be God, blessed be his Holy Name!” We thank God for being God. We “bless” Him for having first blessed us with so many gifts. It is an incredibly powerful way of raising our mind to God: we look about and think of all the wonderful things He has done. We reflect that we alone can “reflect” on all the beauty in us and around us. And we are brought to our knees to say with the angles “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts.”
When we think of God we can become like Saint Peter saying to Jesus, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man”; but then at the thought of his going away from Jesus, Peter said “Lord, to whom shall we go?” Jesus told them to come close, to call God “Our Father.” Jesus sent them and us the Holy Spirit! He claimed us in our Baptism! Adoration is our effort to drink it all in. Adoration often moves us to silence before Our Lord.
Of the Prayer of Petition, the Catechism says: “We are creatures who are not our own beginning, not the masters of adversity, not our own end. We are sinners who as Christians know that we have turned away from our Father. Our petition is always a turning back to Him.” (n 2629) And the first petition is asking for forgiveness like the tax collector in Saint Luke: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
Father Benedict Groeschel was wont to say that growing up in Jersey City nobody questioned original sin – it was all around them! But sin is no less common today – we make mistakes; we exercise poor judgment; we are victims of sibling rivalry or poor toilet training! Really! Is that why Jesus, the Son of God, suffered and died – because we make mistakes! Did you get that understanding from Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion?
For a Catholic, this prayer of petition, beginning with asking for forgiveness, naturally leads us (or ought to) to the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation. And it is amazing that if we go to Confession frequently we become more aware of our sins and grow in our desire to really live a good life. Petitions will begin with ourselves (“Give us our daily bread”), but will wonderfully and quickly also get us into prayer for other people – intercessory prayer! Intercessory prayer can be described as a two edged sword: as we turn to the needs of other people and our field of vision widens, we come imperceptibly to the sense that we do matter. The more we see the bigger picture of the Mystical Body of Christ, the more we realize that we belong and that we matter.
Moses was the great Old Testament model of praying for others, pleading with God, parting the waters. Twenty centuries into the New Testament Our Lady at Fatima asked three little children to pray and do penance to keep people out of hell. Our prayer for others is essential if we are going to be Christians.
Our prayer needs to include Thanksgiving and Praise. And it will! There are not four or five different prayers. There is really only one with various facets. When we get into praying for others, it is so often for people we love and admire so we most likely automatically thank God for them.
It is a beautiful custom in our diocese that when a priest dies, all the other priests offer two Masses for him. That is intercessory prayer, and it reminds us of all the other priests and people who have sparked our vocations. If a day comes when you feel that nobody loves you, say a Hail Mary or a two for good people of your past. You’ll be surprised that it gets to be quite a lift and that you get to feel better very soon.
Thanksgiving and praise. “Holy God, we praise thy Name.” “How great Thou art.” Pope John Paul II, one of God’s greatest gifts to the Church and the world, helped us to focus on God’s goodness by making many new saints. Through the wonders of the internet you can quickly learn about Maximilian Kolbe who gave his life for another prisoner in the Nazi death camp; about Gianna Molla, a young physician who gave her life for her baby. You can learn more about Mother Theresa who, when asked how she would care for all the very poor in Calcutta, replied, “one at a time!” Give thanks to God for all these wonderful people and praise God for giving them and John Paul II to us.
If you are a Catholic reading this message on prayer, it may have already occurred to you what a gift we have in the Mass – the most perfect prayer ever. It is, first of all, fashioned and given to us by God Himself who said to the Apostles “Do this in remembrance of me.” It contains the prayer God taught to us – the Our Father. Time after time in the Mass, the priest says very directly “Let us pray.” Before the Eucharistic prayer he invites us “Pray my brothers and sisters … " And at the end of the Preface he invites us to join the angels and saints in their unending hymn of praise.
The old Irishman was to learn that he had been speaking prose all his life! If we take a deep gulp of humility and get serious about praying, Mass will get to be a more vital component of our week. Confession will get to be a regular component too, and we will be amazed at how different life will look to us.
His initials were J.C. and at 33 he began The Passion. “My attitude began with reciting the rosary, the rosary led me to confession, confession led me to Mass every day. Always when I have the Eucharist in my body then I am feeling more like I am playing Christ.” (Jim Caviezel)
I’ve been praying for you while I put these thoughts down. How about you saying a prayer for me now and for those who got this internet effort going. We’ll settle for a Hail Mary!
God bless you!
Bishop Welsh is Bishop Emeritus of the Dicoese of Allentown, Pennsylvania.
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