Prayer and the Divine Perspective

The following is an upcoming column from my parish bulletin corner. I have published it with the same impatience that might undergird intercessory prayer or Christmas requests.

Youmay have heard of a prayer called “The Saint Andrew Christmas Novena,” which people pray from 30 November (the feast of St. Andrew) to Christmas Day, as often as five times a day. While a novena (from the Latin novem, “nine”) normally goes for nine days, it can refer more broadly to any prayer repeated over a span of time.

Youwanna hear it? Here it goes: Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God! to hear my prayer and grant my desires (mention your intentions here), through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and of His Blessed Mother. Amen.

Prayers like this are a helpful mental and spiritual discipline. Prayer is classically defined as “the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God” (St. John Damascene; cf. CCC 2559). Here the “heart” is not merely the locus of our affections (as in the shorthand “<3”), but also of our thoughts and decisions. So prayer principally raises one’s will to God, following the pivotal petition of the Lord’s own prayer: Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

When we attentively recite a formulaic prayer in which we can offer a specific need, or when we flat-out ask for this or that in our own words, it is important to remember that we are seeking to conform our wills, if not our preferences, to God’s. And how does God reveal His will, or His preference? In the way things unfold.

Godcertainly does not prefer every human decision, but He does permit the sinful ones in particular because to forbid any and all sin might appear to make for a better world, but not a free world in which people either will or will not participate in the good through loving actions, words, and thoughts.

In our prayer(s), another author has said that our deepest desire, when we dig far enough, is to share in the divine perspective on our person and our needs, which includes the whole network of people and situations that contribute in any manner to our person and our needs. That’s a big perspective, a mysterious one that, finally, we will be treated to in heaven. When we happen to receive glimpses of it along the way, God be praised; but that’s His prerogative to grant when and how He might deem it beneficial for us.

Where is that divine perspective located? At once on the cross of Christ and in the unity of the Trinity, for God the Son embodies total suffering and total love. God has so designed it that love and suffering are “total” insofar as they include yours and mine.

Regarding Christian suffering, Saint Paul said, “In my flesh I make up for what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of His Body, which is the Church” (Col 1:24). Regarding Christian love, again Paul: “[God] encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God” (2 Cor 1:4; it is appropriate to substitute the word “love” for “encourage/ment” passim).

If we want an answer to that pesky question “Why,” we’d better brace ourselves if we ever got an answer!

Persons, Persistent and Persecuted

As a "verbivore," I devour words. In this respect I am not unlike the prophet Jeremiah, who said:

"When I found your words, I devoured them; they became my joy and the happiness of my heart, because I bore your name, Lord God of hosts" (15:16)

Nom

Scanning the Scripture readings from this past Sunday, I noticed two words: persistence and persecution. They share the prefix per, which means “through” or “thorough.” The base words are sistere, “to stand,” and sequi, “to follow.” As far as I know, they do not exist by themselves; that is to say, we don’t just “sist” or “secute.” Why stand, if you don’t stand firm, and why follow, if you don’t follow all the way, or follow through? 

Another meaning of sequi is "to pursue," which intensifies the action of following. In the famous 23rd psalm, the line "Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life" could also be rendered, "Only goodness and kindness pursue me." Uh oh--look out for goodness--it's on your tail!" It reminds me of a quote from the author J. D. Salinger: "I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."

But that’s not how a great many of us look at this life. “When’s the next shoe gonna drop?” “I can’t handle this!” “Won’t these people just leave me alone?” “It’s so hard to shake this bad habit.” And where is God in it all? Life oftentimes feels like a persecution.

There are parts of the world where Catholics and other followers of Christ are still being persecuted to the shedding of their blood; but the more prevalent form of persecution consists in pesky temptations and thoughts of how awful we’re doing, of how much better off he has it, how much holier she is. If persecutions are persistent, we must be, too.

Such is the example of the Gospel widow who obtains a favorable judgment, and of Moses who secures the Israelites’ victory over Amalek in the first reading. We must be careful not to treat prayer as a tool for getting God to smooth out our lives and give us what we want, even when we are kind enough to pray for other people’s needs. The importance of these passages, and therefore the importance of prayer, lies not in the outcome but in the attitude; and not even so much in the attitude as in the Power Source.

With every technological advance in the world we have not witnessed the end of disease or mishap. We have not been able to pray sin out of existence. Our own lives can testify to these facts, both in terms of what we have done and what we have experienced.

The life of faith urges us not to abandon the efforts of prayer and service, because every prayerful word and work is an investment in a personal relationship. More than an exercise in interpersonal communication, our prayer may rather resemble a visit to a vending machine. You don’t enter into a relationship with a vending machine! 

Well, maybe this vending machine.

Person: a third "per" word, added this time onto sonare, "to sound." In olden theatre, actors wore masks, through which they expressed ("sounded") the characters they played. Persons know and are known, love and are loved—and the Holy Trinity is a communion of Persons who have chosen to share their life and love with the human race. By entering freely and consciously into prayer, it’s as if we are “charging and syncing our device” with the mind, heart, and will of our God. This results in a deepening of our personhood (understanding and freedom), in a greater sense of our value in our Father’s world and in the lives of others.

Like Moses, we must remember that we do not and cannot pray alone. In the Church’s communal prayer and personal prayer, we are united with the saints and angels in heaven. We are united with the Sacred Scriptures and the Holy Sacraments. Aaron and Hur were there to lift up their persistent leader’s weary arms. For our part, we ought never be ashamed to seek help from others. We ought never be ashamed to need help; whether we want to need it or not, we do, so why fight it? And if we need it, then it stands to reason that others do, as well, and through our openness to God’s power we may find ourselves in the position to offer that help. What a blessing!

Draw Near To God

The other day a young child, presumably accompanied by her grandparents, approached me on the way out of Mass and handed me three pieces of paper that looked like they were torn out of a reporter's notebook. Each piece featured a crayon drawing:

The girl explained the drawings to me: the first two were butterflies, while the third was a man in jail (the caption above him simply reads "bad"). She called him "evil."

She then asked me to "give them to God" (as the first one was addressed, along with her name) and had naught else to say. I thanked her, and devised a way to honor her request.

Later that evening, our Pastor, Monsignor Hartgen, would be offering Mass in honor of his fortieth anniversary of ordination to the Priesthood.

What to do with her offering was but the secondary question; the first, what to make of it!

This daughter of God (she couldn't have been older than 6 or 7) drew Him a picture, which He would hang on the refrigerator door with great delight. How many children pick a bouquet of flowers, make breakfast, or perform another small deed with great love!

It was also an example of intercessory prayer, which is at the heart of the Church's public and personal prayer. In the Liturgy, God Himself works in and through us, reminding us of the world's many and diverse needs, prompting us to "remind" God of those needs with humble confidence.

I can safely presume that this intercessor loves butterflies, but most of all that she loves God, and she showed that love for God by drawing a few butterflies for Him to look upon with delight in His winged creatures. Since human beings are the capstone of material creation, to my knowledge the only creatures capable of artistic representation, God delights in us and in the talents we employ for God's glory and for the edification of our fellows.

Somewhere in my research for a paper on iconography I recall reading that artistic expression itself is a kind of liturgical intercession. Human beings take pigments, parchments, marble, and other mute and mindless things, and do something with them for a higher end. They are doing something redemptive for them by acting on their behalf, adding a perfection, a reason, to their previous identities.

In his first epistle, Saint John said, "If anyone says, 'I love God,' but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen" (4:20). Intercessors love people. That's why they pray for them. Knowing their own capacity for sin, their love for fellow sinners all the more increases, and finds continuous expression in prayer: prayer for their repentance, prayer for their health, their safety, and their salvation.

This child is hardly old enough to commit (grave) sin, yet she has heard of it. News programs show people being placed into police cars and hauled off to jail. At some point parents have the unenviable task of explaining the bad things people do--things far worse than the naughtiness that merits scarcely more than a few minutes in the corner or a pat on the behind.

Our darling intercessor is processing the reality of sin. She wishes it weren't so. When in time she joins the ranks of the culpable, she too will know what it's like to merit eternal damnation and perhaps even incarceration. She'd like God to take care of criminals and other sinners--but not in the way we'd often like to "take care of" them. In our pride we can forget our sinfulness in the face of someone else's, and easily lose our compassion for those who oppose us or do us harm.

I decided to shred her drawings and sprinkle some pieces among the coals that would burn the incense at Monsignor's Mass. (If you attended that Mass and wondered why the incense had a different odor, now you know.) There's more...always more...to burn, and I'll save it for another day.

Quoth the Psalmist: "Let my prayer be incense before you; my uplifted hands an evening sacrifice" (Ps 141:2). Burning a sacrifice of livestock or produce was the Jews' way of giving it to God (and thereby rendering it useless to them). Adding incense to a holocaust was an attempt to mask the awful (offal?) smell, and it was a thoughtful gesture to God: if He had to receive it, at least it might smell a little better! It probably was as effective as air freshener in a stinky bathroom.

What else do we have, of our own accord (i.e., that God didn't give us), to give to God except our sins?   Yet that is precisely what He desires from us--and in a more concrete way than as snippets of paper in a smoking brazier fire pot. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is our spiritual latrine, where that most precious and foul offering is worthily made.

I was most grateful for this girl's colorful and thoughtful intercession, and you should be, too. Her prayer will reach maximum effectiveness if one previously unwilling person walks through his or her fears, headlong into the Sacramental Ocean of Mercy.

I Am Not Great...But God Is

Today was one of those days when I was confronted by my human weakness from several angles.

I reacted selfishly to requests recently made to me--first, for a visit to a hospitalized parishioner from a previous assignment, and second, for assistance with another outside venue that had been accustomed to a priest who will no longer be available.  In time I visited the hospitalized person; as I expected, the visit was a delightful chance to catch up on old times and converse about present concerns.  It was one of many ministerial experiences where, I believe, both parties are ministering to each other; where Christ is [in] the transaction.  (I try to look upon the discharge of all my responsibilities in that way.)  As for the request for outside assistance, the jury is still out on that, but I sense where it will go.

These were legitimate requests.  One could say that the petitioners were honoring me by their requests.  Yes, I'm a warm, consecrated body--Father Youlldo's the name.  But more than that: a priest who, in nearly ten years, has served with his increasingly evident limitations and God's increasingly evident grace.  A man whose first thought still tends to be selfish and self-centered, but who has discovered that the first thought isn't always the most reliable basis for action.

(Suddenly this recent article from Msgr. Pope makes me wonder whether I should stop writing and indeed erase this blog entry... aw, damn the torpedoes!)

It's enough for me most days to handle that day's events.  Marlon Brando's famous line sometimes haunts me: "I coulda been a contender."  Previous visions of academic or ministerial prowess have given way to my present situation--in the midst of which, at heart, I echo the Psalmist: "The measuring lines have fallen for me in pleasant places" (16:6).  The people I have served in every assignment have manifested to me the tender compassion of God.  Notwithstanding the divine life imparted in the proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Sacraments, I hope I've helped God's people half as much as they have helped me.  With gratitude I note that I didn't pen these pastoral arrangements, because I couldn't have put things together half as well.

The seminary profs told us, "Nobody who goes to you in Confession is going to ask you how many degrees you have"; in another place I heard, "Yeah, thermometers have degrees, too, and you know where they stick them sometimes!"

But some among us do have many degrees.  They've worked hard for them, and they put them to good use.  And some among us do receive great responsibilities.  They have proved their competence.  From time to time it sinks in, this notion that I have not achieved the sort of greatness that once I wished I would have.  Instead, "Here am I, and the children God has given to me" (Heb 2:13; cf. Isa 8:18).  At life's end, what more is left?  What more is right?

This paragraph from the Catechism (2606) consoles me:

All the troubles, for all time, of humanity enslaved by sin and death, all the petitions and intercessions of salvation history are summed up in this cry of the [crucified] incarnate Word.  Here the Father accepts them and, beyond all hope, answers them by raising his Son.  Thus is fulfilled and brought to completion the drama of prayer in the economy of creation and salvation.  The Psalter gives us the key to prayer in Christ.  In the "today" of the Resurrection the Father says: "You are my Son, today I have begotten you.  Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession" (Ps 2:7-8).

My troubles, too--especially those of my own making (by far the majority)--were subsumed in the cry of the Crucified.  Implicit in my experience of those troubles is the petition for their amelioration.  "I don't like this, Lord; please make it better, or help me to deal with it better."  In case you were wondering, I have not forgotten to pray for the caller from the former assignment.  Intercession is an integral part of priestly prayer, for Jesus the High Priest "lives for ever to make intercession for us" (Heb 7:25).  My troubles, petitions, and intercessions were already heard, and they were already answered, favorably.  In faith I can affirm that right now, even as my troubles and the troubles of all humanity are taking place.  It is further helpful to recall that the ministry of priests takes up the cries of wounded humanity (priests included!), unites them to the Son, and presents them to the Eternal Father.

I don't know if there is any theological substantiation for this, but I suspect that in each offering of the Mass, each Confession, each anointing, somehow every sin and shortcoming is presented and none is omitted.  This would not excuse us from the responsibility to repent, to assist at Mass, to pray, to live according to the demands of the Gospel; but it reinforces Our Lord's prior, all-consuming interest in our welfare.  My true greatness consists in my recognition of, and participation in, God's love for me as He expresses it in Creed, Cult, Code, and Connection--in the Church's teaching, worship, living, and praying.