DO YOU REALLY NEED ME TO PRAY FOR YOU?

1/21/13




I have long had ambiguous feelings about praying for people or asking for prayers from people. I spend a lot of time praying for friends, public figures, and even for random strangers. I’m not at all shy about asking people to pray for me. (In fact, while I’m on the subject, please say a prayer for me and my family and I will say at least one for you and yours. Thanks.) Catholics regularly ask the saints to pray for us. One of our most beautiful prayers is the Memorare, a prayer of petition to the Blessed Mother that concludes



“O Mother of the Word Incarnate,

despise not my petitions,

but in your mercy, hear and answer me.

Amen.”



So why am I do have such ambiguous feelings about mutual prayer?

Leave aside for a moment, as grist for another mill, whether we should be asking God for anything beyond knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. God is, after all, not some kind of cosmic short order cook. See my 12/30/12 LBJ AND THE INSCRUTABILITY OF THE LORD. I still have problems with praying for people and having people pray for me, even though I still believe that prayer for others is one of our most important jobs in life and an activity in which I regularly and enthusiastically engage and I ask people, all of you included, for your prayers. Why?



Praying for others seems to assume that God has to be talked into doing good things for us. We sometimes have an image of God as some kind of almighty curmudgeon, or worse, who really is looking for an opportunity to flick us into hell, or otherwise wreak havoc on our lives, at the slightest provocation. He must be appeased…or else. And what better way to appease Him but to request that someone, especially someone on His good side, ask Him to do something nice for us, or at least to go easy on us? As Christians, and especially as Catholics, we consider Mary to be as close to Him as one could possibly get. He can’t refuse His mother, right? So let’s ask Mary to bring our requests, permissions, etc., to Him, and maybe He’ll accede to our requests.



This whole notion seems absurd. God is, after all, love. He wants to do what is best for us and is always striving to do what is best for us. The problem is our cooperation and the cooperation of other people with His plans for good for us, but I digress. He doesn’t have to be talked into inundating us with manifestations of His love; that’s what He does as a loving Father. And He’s not going to do what is bad for us or give us things we shouldn’t have, no matter how much we ask His mother to nag Him about it. And, by the way, Mary is not going to nag her Son to do what we want simply because we want it.



So it seems nonsensical to ask people to ask God to do things He already intends to do and pointless and harmful to ask people to ask God to do things He doesn’t want to do because they are not in His loving plan for us. As St. Peter tells us (1 Peter 5, 6)



“Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you.”



and the author of Hebrews tells us (Hebrews 13, 5)



“…for he has said ‘I will never forsake you or abandon you.’”



And he means NEVER, but I digress.





And yet…



Those who have heralded God’s message often, almost characteristically, ask us to pray for each other. St. James (James 5, 16) writes



“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.”





The author of the letter, or the homily, to the Hebrews says (Hebrews 13, 19):



“I especially ask for your prayers that I may be restored to you very soon.”





St. Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1, 11):



“…as you help us with prayer so that thanks may be given by many on our behalf for the gift granted us through the prayers of many.”



And again in his first letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 5, 25):



“Brothers, pray for us, too.”



These are only two of the many instances in which Paul asks for prayers; the ends of his letters are filled with such requests.





So if prayers to a loving God to do loving things are unnecessary, why do His heralds frequently ask for prayers and advise us to pray for each other?



I, like all you, don’t know. But, as usual, I have a theory. Prayer for others is a gift not to the person prayed for but for the person doing the praying. Prayer benefits primarily the prayER not the prayEE. God is already taking care, or trying to take care, of the person prayed for. But the person who prays for someone else grows in love not only for the person for whom s/he is praying but also for God Himself…or Herself.



Any reason to talk to God is a good reason. But talking to God on behalf of someone else is living out His command of love of and service to each other.

THE WEDDING FEAST AT CANA: A WHOLE LOT OF PARTYING GOING ON…AND MARY’S COMMAND FOR THE AGES

11/27/12




Just about everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, is familiar with Jesus’ first miracle at Cana; i.e., His turning water into wine. (John 2, 1-12) The story certainly has its moments, especially when the none the wiser headwaiter is surprised by the quality of the newly created wine and says



“Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.”



Somehow, those of us who have been known in the past to enjoy an adult beverage or two can relate, only many of our stories do not deal so much with new wine as with, say, Budweiser and Buckhorn (The latter was 69 cents a six pack, unless one could find it on sale, when I was a young man…a long, long, time ago. It could only be drunk at near frozen temperatures due to a taste that approximated dishwater in which pots containing lots of onions had been washed. But it completed the job cheaply after one had imbibed several Budweisers.), but I digress. Also, Jesus didn’t mess around; when He made wine, He made good stuff, consistent with His whole approach to life.



The miracle at the Cana wedding feast, however, is more than an interesting and entertaining story. I find two aspects especially intriguing and they are at least ancillarily related.

First, John says that the jars or jugs into which the water was poured and from which it was dispensed as wine were not ordinary jugs, but, rather “six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons.” (John 2, 6, New American Bible) So, first, we are talking about some serious drinking here. Second, and more important, note that everything in John is loaded with symbolism and has at least two meanings. In this case, the replacement of the Jewish ceremonial washings with the new wine of Jesus Christ is interpreted as Jesus’ replacing of the old Jewish law with the new covenant of His message and His blood. That is doubtless true. But the replacement of the ceremonial washings with the new wine of Jesus can also be interpreted as the replacement of rote and sometimes empty ritual with the true worship of God “in Spirit and truth” (John, 4, 24). Not all of that empty ritual took place 2,000 years ago in the Holy Land; many still mistake the rote practice of ritual with true worship of God and of His Son.



Second, “the mother of Jesus” (John 2, 2) (who, interestingly, is never named in John’s gospel), gives the servers a command that transcends the ages:



“Do whatever he tells you.” (John, 2, 5)



She was speaking not only to those few attendants who unwittingly, but obediently, became instruments in Jesus’ first miracle. She is telling all of us to “do whatever he tells you” that so we, too, can become instruments in Jesus’ ongoing work. This command of Mary, the only command of Mary in the gospels, is all that we need to do.



The problem of course, is trying to determine what Jesus tells us. God speaks to me and He speaks to you, but never as clearly as we would like. And the problem is compounded by the legions of people who presume to speak for Christ and insist that we do whatever they tell us because, after all, they speak for Christ. And many of these same people seem to insist on the preeminence of ritual, which is sometime good and sometimes not so good, but never capable of leading to salvation. See my 10/22/12 post ST. PAUL, ST. JAMES, AND SALVATION BY FAITH.

ST. PAUL, ST. JAMES, AND SALVATION BY FAITH

10/22/12




The first of today’s (Monday, 10/22/12’s) readings in the Catholic Church comes from the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, concluding with verses 8-11:



For by grace you have been saved through faith,

and this is not from you; it is the gift of God;

it is not from works, so no one may boast.

For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works

that God has prepared in advance,

that we should live in them.

This is far, far from the only place in which Paul has made the point that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ and not from our works, our devotion, dedication, or anything else we can do, have done, or will do; faith, not works, saves us and we incapable of achieving our own salvation. All the novenas, all the Masses or services we attend, all the confessions we make, all the work among the poor and the sick, all of the personal sacrifices we make for others will not win us salvation. Salvation cannot be won or earned; it is a free gift from God, won by the sacrifice of His Son on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. Paul could not be more explicit in making this point than he is in this passage.



Does this mean that works are worthless, that we are free to do whatever we please as long as we believe in God? Of course not, for at least two reasons.

First, our good works are a manifestation of our faith, a sign of our faith. He who says he has faith in God and then acts in a manner contrary to God’s wishes, or to sound morals, may believe in God but he has no faith in God. As James said, (Chapter 2, vs. 18-22, New American Bible):



Indeed someone might say, “You have faith and I have works. Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works. You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble. Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? Was not Abraham our Father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and that faith was completed by the works. (Emphasis mine)



The minor point here is that I love St. James; he tells it like it is (“you ignoramus..) and provides me solace, or at least justification, when I, as is my wont in my blogs and elsewhere, put the proper label on someone.



The major point here is that believing is not faith; even the demons believe that Jesus is the Christ, as demonstrated in several of his exorcisms. Faith is deeper than belief. That faith is demonstrated, or, as James puts it, completed by works. Anyone can say “Oh, yeah, I believe that Jesus is Lord.” But true faith is demonstrated by the way we live our lives—with an awareness of Christ. And it is living in this awareness, rather than living by the rules, that saves us.



The second reason that good works are necessary lies in the old expression that God has no hands or, with a slight variation, that we are the only hands God has. If God is to accomplish His work of salvation, we must do our very large part in spreading the word of God so that others may have faith in Him and thus be saved. We can do so with words, but, as St. Francis of Assisi said,



Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.



and



It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.



Again, we demonstrate our faith through our works and we preach the faith through our works. Further, God needs us to accomplish His work of salvation; without us, nothing, or very little, gets accomplished in saving the human race through faith in Him and in His Son.