Believe

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a parishioner after Mass, outside of church.  We had been
talking for a while, and just about everyone else had already left. As I said goodbye to my friend
and walked back towards my office inside the Parish Center, I noticed an older gentleman,
probably in his early 80’s, waving his hand at me to get my attention. 

I waited a few moments, as he caught up to me. After asking me a question about an upcoming
parish event, he mentioned that he planned to attend, but that he would be alone. His eyes got a
little misty and he said that all of his children, and now, also, his wife, had fallen away from the
church. “They’re good, decent people,” he said, “but they just don’t believe anymore.”

The question of belief has been on my mind lately, so I was able to tell him that in my close to
20 years of parish ministry, I have seen quite a few conversions or re-versions to Catholicism.
While each person and his or her journey is unique, there is one thing they all have in common.
In every instance, there is always someone, somewhere, who is praying for them. Always. Every
single time. Without exception.

I reassured my older friend that he was doing exactly what he needed to do for his loved ones,
lifting them up in prayer to God, even if he struggled to think it was making any difference, even
if it seemed like all his efforts were going unheard and unanswered. 

The truth is we don’t know how the Holy Spirit is working in the lives of the people we pray for,
and sometimes we may go for a long period of time not seeing any change, having to have faith
that God is working somehow, someway. But it’s also true that if we can persevere long enough,
God will answer our prayers in some way, simply out of love and concern for the pray-er if
nothing else, loving and responding to both the pray-er and the prayee in the best way.

This week, on Wednesday, January 18, we will begin the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  First
observed in 1908, the Octave of Christian Unity starts on the Feast of St. Peter’s Chair
(January 18) and ends on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (January 25). The Octave, so called
because of its 8 days, was begun by an Episcopal minister, Fr. Paul Watson, as a small, local
attempt to pray for reconciliation between the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. In 1916,
after Fr. Paul and co-founder Sr. Lurana White became Roman Catholics, Pope Benedict XV
extended the observance of this octave to the universal church.  As the decades have rolled by,
this week has grown in stature and is now joined by all Christians who wish to echo and pray for
the fulfillment of Christ’s prayer to his Father, “that all may be one.” 

It was the closeness of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, combined with the conversation
with my older friend that led me to reflect once again on the question of belief. What do we, as Catholics, believe?  What, in a nutshell, are our beliefs, especially those that we share with most other Christians?  The answer to these questions is already given to us in the Apostles Creed. 
With this in mind, I created a simple Rosary Novena called Believe. This novena takes each of
the “I Believe” professions we say in the Apostles Creed as a daily meditation, one for each day,
and ends with the prayer taught by the Angel of Peace to the children in Fatima.

I hope this novena will help in praying for healing between different denominations. I hope it will add to the
prayers and works offered during the Week of Christian Unity. Most especially, I hope it will
help my church friend and all those like him, who are remaining faithful in prayer, persistently
asking God to bring their loved ones back into the fold. I’m going to look for him again and give
him a copy of the novena, and then choose to believe in the power of prayer and God’s ability to
reach and reconcile each of us, no matter how impossible that may seem.